Access 2013 Bible
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Copyright 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
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ISBN 978-1-118-49035-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-49034-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-49155-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-49154-6 (ebk)
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About the Authors
Michael Alexander is a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and author of several books on advanced business analysis with Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel. He has more than 15 years of experience consulting and developing Microsoft Office solutions. Mike has been named a Microsoft MVP for his ongoing contributions to the Excel community. In his spare time, he runs a free tutorial site, www.datapigtechnologies.com
, where he shares Excel and Access tips.
Dick Kusleika has been awarded as a Microsoft MVP for 12 consecutive years and has been working with Microsoft Office for more than 20. Dick develops Access- and Excel-based solutions for his clients and has conducted training seminars on Office products in the United States and Australia. Dick also writes a popular Excel-related blog at www.dailydoseofexcel.com
.
To the memory of Mike Groh, the author of this book's previous two editions.
Our deepest thanks to the professionals at John Wiley & Sons for all the hours of work put into bringing this book to life. Thanks also to Doug Steele for suggesting numerous improvements to the examples and text in this book. Finally, a special thank you goes out to our families for putting up with all the time spent locked away on this project.
Introduction
Welcome to Access 2013 Bible, your personal guide to the most powerful desktop database management system available today.
If you've picked up this book, you've probably already recognized that Microsoft Access can help you manage your data in ways that no other application can. Even the king of applications, Microsoft Excel, can't do what Access can. Now, it may seem silly to compare Access (a database management application) with Excel (a spreadsheet application), but there is no doubt that Excel is being used every day to manage and analyze large amounts of data in all kinds of organizations. Indeed, you may be opening this book because you need to get past the limitations of Excel.
Access is an excellent (many would say logical) next step for the analyst who faces an ever-increasing data pool. Access takes very few performance hits with larger datasets. It has no predetermined row limitations. And it can effectively manage the relationships between disparate data tables. In addition, Access comes with tools that help you build your own distributable applications.
Today, when we have more data than ever and more demands for complex data analysis, power analysts need to add some tools to their repertoire in order to get away from being simply spreadsheet mechanics. That's why this book is such an important step in the evolution of your skillset. Throughout this book, not only will you get an introduction to Access, but you'll also learn various ways in which you can use Access to improve your daily data management and analysis.
Is This Book for You?
This book contains everything you need in order to learn Access 2013 to a mid-advanced level. The book starts off with database basics and builds, chapter by chapter.
This book is designed to enhance the skillset of users at all levels (beginning, intermediate, and even advanced users of Access). Start at the beginning if you're new to Access. If you're already familiar with Access and comfortable building Access applications, you may want to start with the later parts of this book.