recommendations anyone?
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From a VBA point of view I really Like "Access Database: Design And Programming" from O'Reilly. It wont give you much information about how to build a form, it will give you lots of information on how to build your queries and write the VBA code to drive the form.
When you've had a chance to use VBA for a bit, I really recommend "VB and VBA in a nutshell" also by O'Reilly. It's not a tutorial and if you aren't aware of what a particular command does, at a basic level, to begin with then it possibly won't be much use, but as reference material it's been invaluable to me.
I originally bought it, funnily enough for Excel, but there is an excellent VBA tutorial in "Excel 2003 VBA" by Wrox Press, although I do question the wisdom of dedicating a whole chapter to OO design concepts and then ignoring for most of the rest of the book. I'd hope and imagine that there is one similar for access, but if not, I reckon it's still worth picking up as I've always found the two applications closely related in my line of work.
When you've had a chance to use VBA for a bit, I really recommend "VB and VBA in a nutshell" also by O'Reilly. It's not a tutorial and if you aren't aware of what a particular command does, at a basic level, to begin with then it possibly won't be much use, but as reference material it's been invaluable to me.
I originally bought it, funnily enough for Excel, but there is an excellent VBA tutorial in "Excel 2003 VBA" by Wrox Press, although I do question the wisdom of dedicating a whole chapter to OO design concepts and then ignoring for most of the rest of the book. I'd hope and imagine that there is one similar for access, but if not, I reckon it's still worth picking up as I've always found the two applications closely related in my line of work.
Oldsoftboss
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I'd recommend hanging around here.
I have The Access Bible (2000), Access 2000 for Dummies and another one somewhere (all about $100.00 each), but they deal in general stuff and give silly and not very relevant code snippets, and in the case of The Access Bible, the examples on the accompanying CD were terrible.
I have learnt 1000 times as much here by being able to ask specific questions, and being answered by VERY knowledgeable people.
Dave
I have The Access Bible (2000), Access 2000 for Dummies and another one somewhere (all about $100.00 each), but they deal in general stuff and give silly and not very relevant code snippets, and in the case of The Access Bible, the examples on the accompanying CD were terrible.
I have learnt 1000 times as much here by being able to ask specific questions, and being answered by VERY knowledgeable people.
Dave
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I'd second that as well. I've learnt more about Access pottering around here reading other peoples questions and posting up a few of my own here and there.
One thing you do get from here is a break from the railroading that building your own Access applications tends to give you. You've possibly got a very limited scope regarding what you are trying to do with Access and I've found a lot of the questions and answers here very useful for pointing me towards things that despite two years of intensive use of Access that I didn't even know existed.
boblarson
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And to agree with tehNellie and Dave, I have learned, and still keep learning, so much from this forum. When I first got going here I started scanning the questions and subscribed to the threads if the question was something I wanted to know too. Then, I would get notification when it got posts.
Lately, my posts have become more answers than questions, but I still find myself learning so much when I may answer some question and someone else posts a better way of doing it. I think, just like life, it's a continuous learning process.
Lately, my posts have become more answers than questions, but I still find myself learning so much when I may answer some question and someone else posts a better way of doing it. I think, just like life, it's a continuous learning process.
I agree with the statement that the Forum is an excellent learning place, but still, in order to avoid asking too basic questions and speed up your learning curve, it's certainly worthwhile doing some reading first. Books (good books) have the advantage of allowing one to rapidly absorb a given set of information, and to serve as reference also, afterwards. So if u can afford it, certainly do some reading and experementing first. When your questions get to the level where books do not provide the answers any longer, you're ready for the forums, like this one.
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My wife taught MS Office stuff until she took leave to recuperate from an accident. However, for the 10+ years she taught, she never once found a book she really liked. The problem is that the books have to shoot for a target audience. It is apparently very hard for an author to keep focused on that target based on what I've seen.
Having said that, any book that says "Beginner to Intermediate" is a place to start where you can operate at your own pace and get an overview of how to approach some simple problems.
If I may offer an opinion, the difficulty with advanced books is that to get down and dirty behind the scenes, you need to contrive examples (which becomes obviously... well... contrived) or you have to introduce people to real problems about which they have no backing knowledge. Which is a true killer of understanding.
Therefore, I recommend no particular book but do offer these observations as a warning to finish the books feeling somehow short-changed. But still knowing more than when you started.
Having said that, any book that says "Beginner to Intermediate" is a place to start where you can operate at your own pace and get an overview of how to approach some simple problems.
If I may offer an opinion, the difficulty with advanced books is that to get down and dirty behind the scenes, you need to contrive examples (which becomes obviously... well... contrived) or you have to introduce people to real problems about which they have no backing knowledge. Which is a true killer of understanding.
Therefore, I recommend no particular book but do offer these observations as a warning to finish the books feeling somehow short-changed. But still knowing more than when you started.
