Question My Access Task, Help!

[Boston Roberts]

Confusing Access Assigment, can some one explain this jargon to me?

What follows is a task I'm supposed to do but the problem is I don't know what it is I'm supposed to do. ​

...
The management of My Little Bookshop have asked you to help them automate some of their
regular tasks.
These tasks require you to create Templates for their Word Processing and Spreadsheet operations.
Additionally you need to create several Macros to automatically perform a few routine tasks.
You may use either Microsoft Office or OpenOfficeOrg applications to perform these tasks.
1. Using your word Processing Program:
a) Create a template that has your company logo at the top left corner and store address at the
top right, a generic salutation, a space for the body of the letter and a closing salutation with
a date field.
b) Create a template similar to the one above except that the salutation is to have a “fillin” field
for the addressee and the body is also to be a “fillin” field.
The closing salutation is to be a series of “fillin” fields for the name of the person and their
position and an autoupadting date field.
c) Using the template from part b to create a mail merge main document that has the name and
address of the customer below the logo, their name in the salutation, and the following fields
in the body of the letter advising them of the arrival of their ordered books and the balance
owing
Name of Book
Final Price
Balance Owing
d) Create buttons on a toolbar to easily access these documents.​

2. Using your Spreadsheet Program:
Create a macro to prepare a weekly sales report – the report to include the following as a
minimum:
Company Logo in cell A1
Company address in A6
Title “Week ending:” in A2
Date of the Friday of the week in B2
From A4 the Name of the book, B4 type of book, C4 Quantity sold, D4 Value of sales
a graph showing the sales
a list of the top 5 sellers
This data to come from your database​

3. Using the Database program:
Create a “switchboard” or opening menu that displays when the database is opened.
This menu to have buttons that access and run macros to perform the following tasks:
Display a list of books by a specific author [parameter query]
Move books that are discontinued to a Discontinued table then delete them from the main table
Print a list of books that are out of stock
Export the list to a text file for manipulation elsewhere
...​

I can do the Mail merge and Excel parts but I'm completly stuck on the last bit which looks like an alien language to me. What does this all mean? Can someone explain the last bit to me or tell me what I have to do? Any help at all would be amazing.​

 

[Rabbie]

This sounds like a class assignment so I would suggest you read up your course notes on databases. You should find them helpful.

 

[stopher]

I agree with Rabbie. But I’ll give you some idea where you should be heading (although I didn’t attend your course so I am surmising)

You presumably have MS Access. You need to create a new Access Database.

You will need to analyse the requirements listed then decide how many tables to create and what data should be listed in each table. Then you can create the tables.

Then some of the requirements can be answered by creating queries (these are like customised virtual views of the data from one or more tables with selected columns and filtered records). There's plenty of help on the internet for creating different type of queries.

For the “Print a list of books…” If you are printing something then normally you would create a Report but equally you could do it with a Query (depends on what you’ve covered in your course).

For the exporting bit, type Export in Access help. It will explain how to export data in various formats.

The switchboard/menu I would do last because then you will have all the components ready to apply to it. I’m sure there is a wizard for creating Switchboards which should hold your hand through the process. If not then Google Access Switchboard and you should be able to find a step by step approach. Personally I create my own custom menus (by creating a Form) but if you are new to this then you might find the Switchboard approach easier.

I think I given you a fair bit of help there but hopefully not too much If you reach sticking points then feel free to ask showing where you have got to, but be aware that members of the forum generally want to see that you are doing the assignment yourself.

Chris