Microsoft Access is a Database Management System offered by Microsoft. It uses the Microsoft Jet Database Engine and comes as a part of the. Starting with Access ,.accdb is the default Access file format. replace.me file format supports a number of newer features, such as calculated fields and. The free version, Windows SharePoint Server (WSS), usually referred to as simply of MOSS only work with the newest version of Microsoft Office.
 
 

Microsoft Access – Download.Microsoft Access – Wikipedia

 

This article provides a brief overview of databases — what they are, why you might want to use one, and what the different parts of a database do. The terminology is geared toward Microsoft Access databases, but the concepts apply to all database products.

What is a database? The parts of an Access database. A database is a tool for collecting and organizing information. Databases can store information about people, products, orders, or anything else.

Many databases start as a list in a word-processing program or spreadsheet. As the list grows bigger, redundancies and inconsistencies begin to appear in the data.

The data becomes hard to understand in list form, and there are limited ways of searching or pulling subsets of data out for review. Once these problems start to appear, it’s a good idea to transfer the data to a database created by a database management system DBMS , such as Access. A computerized database is a container of objects. One database can contain more than one table.

For example, an inventory tracking system that uses three tables is not three databases, but one database that contains three tables. Unless it has been specifically designed to use data or code from another source, an Access database stores its tables in a single file, along with other objects, such as forms, reports, macros, and modules. Databases created in the Access format which is also used by Access, , Access and Access have the file extension.

You can use Access , Access , Access , or Access to create files in earlier file formats for example, Access and Access A database table is similar in appearance to a spreadsheet, in that data is stored in rows and columns. As a result, it is usually quite easy to import a spreadsheet into a database table. The main difference between storing your data in a spreadsheet and storing it in a database is in how the data is organized. To get the most flexibility out of a database, the data needs to be organized into tables so that redundancies don’t occur.

For example, if you’re storing information about employees, each employee should only need to be entered once in a table that is set up just to hold employee data. Data about products will be stored in its own table, and data about branch offices will be stored in another table. This process is called normalization. Each row in a table is referred to as a record. Records are where the individual pieces of information are stored. Each record consists of one or more fields. Fields correspond to the columns in the table.

For example, you might have a table named “Employees” where each record row contains information about a different employee, and each field column contains a different type of information, such as first name, last name, address, and so on. Fields must be designated as a certain data type, whether it’s text, date or time, number, or some other type. Another way to describe records and fields is to visualize a library’s old-style card catalog.

Each card in the cabinet corresponds to a record in the database. Each piece of information on an individual card author, title, and so on corresponds to a field in the database. For more information about tables, see the article Introduction to tables.

Forms allow you to create a user interface in which you can enter and edit your data. Forms often contain command buttons and other controls that perform various tasks. You can create a database without using forms by simply editing your data in the table datasheets. However, most database users prefer to use forms for viewing, entering, and editing data in the tables.

You can program command buttons to determine which data appears on the form, open other forms or reports, or perform a variety of other tasks. For example, you might have a form named “Customer Form” in which you work with customer data. The customer form might have a button which opens an order form where you can enter a new order for that customer. Forms also allow you to control how other users interact with the data in the database. For example, you can create a form that shows only certain fields and allows only certain operations to be performed.

This helps protect data and to ensure that the data is entered properly. For more information about forms, see the article Introduction to forms.

Reports are what you use to format, summarize and present data. A report usually answers a specific question, such as “How much money did we receive from each customer this year?

A report can be run at any time, and will always reflect the current data in the database. Reports are generally formatted to be printed out, but they can also be viewed on the screen, exported to another program, or sent as an attachment to an e-mail message. For more information about reports, see the article Introduction to reports in Access. Queries can perform many different functions in a database. Their most common function is to retrieve specific data from the tables. The data you want to see is usually spread across several tables, and queries allow you to view it in a single datasheet.

Also, since you usually don’t want to see all the records at once, queries let you add criteria to “filter” the data down to just the records you want. Certain queries are “updateable,” meaning you can edit the data in the underlying tables via the query datasheet. If you are working in an updateable query, remember that your changes are actually being made in the tables, not just in the query datasheet. Queries come in two basic varieties: select queries and action queries. A select query simply retrieves the data and makes it available for use.

You can view the results of the query on the screen, print it out, or copy it to the clipboard. Or, you can use the output of the query as the record source for a form or report. An action query, as the name implies, performs a task with the data.

Action queries can be used to create new tables, add data to existing tables, update data, or delete data. For more information about queries, see the article Introduction to queries. Macros in Access can be thought of as a simplified programming language which you can use to add functionality to your database. For example, you can attach a macro to a command button on a form so that the macro runs whenever the button is clicked. Macros contain actions that perform tasks, such as opening a report, running a query, or closing the database.

Most database operations that you do manually can be automated by using macros, so they can be great time-saving devices. For more information about macros, see the article Introduction to Access programming. Modules, like macros, are objects you can use to add functionality to your database.

Whereas you create macros in Access by choosing from a list of macro actions, you write modules in the Visual Basic for Applications VBA programming language. A module is a collection of declarations, statements, and procedures that are stored together as a unit. A module can be either a class module or a standard module.

Class modules are attached to forms or reports, and usually contain procedures that are specific to the form or report they’re attached to. Standard modules contain general procedures that aren’t associated with any other object. Standard modules are listed under Modules in the Navigation Pane, whereas class modules are not.

For more information about modules, see the article Introduction to Access programming. Need more help? Expand your skills. Get new features first.

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[What’s New in Access | Microsoft Office Reference Guide | InformIT

 
MS Access provides a great database development tool through simple user-friendly graphical user interface. It has many advantages over MS Excel or other. Starting with Access ,.accdb is the default Access file format. replace.me file format supports a number of newer features, such as calculated fields and.

 
 

Microsoft office access 2007 is usually referred to as free

 
 

If the reference issue involves an ActiveX control, you can sometimes resolve the issue by refreshing the reference list. To refresh the reference list:. There are two types of licenses for ActiveX controls: a design-time license and a run-time license. A Missing flag, which you may see when you open a module in Design view and then click References on the Tools menu, indicates that the reference to the Common Dialog control on the target computer does not match the source in the database file from the development computer.

If you distribute a database file without installing the distributable Common Dialog control, the control’s reference may be flagged as Missing, or you may receive an error message that “You don’t have the license required to use this ActiveX control” if the non-distributable control is already installed on the target computer.

Even when the database file is part of a run-time application, you may receive the error message that “You don’t have the license required to use this ActiveX control” if the non-distributable control that’s already installed on the target computer is of a later version than the control that’s provided by your run-time application.

This issue can occur because the Setup program does not overwrite later versions of a file with an earlier version of the same file. It is possible for a file to be in the reference list without being correctly registered in the registry.

If you suspect that this might be the case, follow these steps to re-register the file:. If you don’t have the Regsvr If the file is not available, you can obtain the file from the Microsoft Web site.

Number of modules including forms and reports that have the HasModule property set to True. Number of characters in an SQL statement that serves as the Recordsource or Rowsource property of a form, report, or control.

Number of characters in an SQL statement that serves as the Recordsource or Rowsource property of a form, report, or control both. Database design basics. Learn the structure of an Access database. Protect your data with backup and restore processes. Note: For Access , it is 20 characters. Need more help? Expand your skills. The Form view has also been altered. Here you can see an attachment field in the form, and the navigation bar at the bottom. There is also a new Interactive Forms Design mode that is not completely design mode and not completely forms mode, but lets you work more intuitively with your forms, entering information and revising its appearance at the same time.

A new feature in Access is the addition of Conditional Formats into forms. Using a dialog box similar to that in Excel , you can tell Access to highlight specific information based upon parameters — such as being higher or lower than a specified value. With these new features there are some missing pieces. Access has no more Data Access pages — there are new strategies in place for sharing tables and forms online. As you probably realize the main way to connect to an online database as Office evolves is to create a web form with InfoPath.

There are a number of other enhancements worth noting. Access has made it easier to filter data. Different filter options are available for text, numbers, and date data types.

The new filtering options make it possible to filter a date column for all records in Today, Yesterday, Last Week, Next Month, Future, Past, or any other date. The filtering experience is consistent between Office Excel and Office Access And Access now supports complex data types, so you can accept more than one value in a cell using columns in the table.

For example, if you assign a task to more than one person, both names can be contained in the same cell. Windows SharePoint Services is compatible with these complex data types to help ensure data symmetry between the local and Web-based data stores. There is no question that the main thrust of the Office System is to promote collaboration through SharePoint, and you can see that in many parts of the Access Ribbon. But individual users will probably like the user friendliness of the templates.

And while there are fewer automatic wizards to build forms and tables, the Ribbon tabs devoted to these tasks are quite comprehensive. In all Access promises to bring relational database functionality to many users who may have gone only as far as Excel in their database experience.

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time. Pearson Education, Inc. This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Well, the App developed by this 7Mb large! What Martin described has come to pass as new products that entered the market, gave the user more and more tools to develop applications, both stand-alone and dependent.

Literally millions of applications have been built and used by those who had too little funding to have the work done for them. Many small companies were able to take advantage of RDB functions who could not afford the cost of a full-blown system designed to meet their needs of the present and scalable to meet their needs in the years ahead. As is generally the case, necessity dictates taking advantage of opportunity and the small business world did just that, in spite of all the poo-pooing by large system developers and the IBM salesforce.

The reader will note from the preceding messages that some solution-seekers took alternate paths and were as happy with their choice as those who chose Access. Late to the party, and a dinosaur. Been using MS-Access since 2, switched to Office97 and stayed there.

I suggest there are many MS-Access projects that have been running for years in niche environments such as healthcare and research. You could ask if many of them have been forced to, or have felt the need to, migrate to another database. The difficulty, of course, would be in finding where these niche projects are being run, maybe under the radar of the corporate IT management. The reason why it has stuck around as long as it has is there nothing better on the market for what it does.

With Access you can create an entire applications. With other software, they are either not as robust in functionality or require two or more pieces of software to create the desired application. But all that aside, what ultimately sets Access apart from all the other is its reporting tool. The other huge plus is that if your database gets too large, then you can easily upscale it to SQL server express free from MS and use that as a backend.

I am right there with you. I am a full time, work from home, Access developer for a major bank in Toronto. I can make Access stand up and dance. I have been saying for years we need to use something more capable like Visual Studio as a front end, but they wont hear if it. I wore many hats in the commercial finance world — from the early 80s to my retirement in I criticize MS for a lot of things — such as undieing refusal to make Excel for iPad much more robust — but I praise them for continuing to semi-support Access which would be wonderful app if it could be paired with an iPad.

My clients were mainly large companies, and a significant part of my job was to convert Excel projects into Access. The integration of Excel and Access is absolutely superb, and it is a natural progression to convert a series of Excel files into an Access database.

If you look around a large corporate office, you will see that everyone is using Excel. Lots of projects start off being recorded in Excel. As projects develop, the number of Excel files grows exponentially and eventually there are Excel files all over the place; and it becomes quite unwieldy to handle the data.

At this stage, you should convert the Excel data across to Access. I found that the Excel data system starts to get very difficult when the user has more than 20 Excel files holding the various pieces of the data, or when you have several users wanting to use the data. Also, if the largest Excel file has over , rows of data, it is much easier to move the data across to Access. Because Excel is so dominant, then Access will surely continue alongside it. The big problem I did have just before that set me back a while was making it an executable.

It was fixed though, but not by Microsoft. Someone a lot cleverer than I wrote a script and offered it for sale. Sagekey software I believe was the scriptwriter and I gladly handed over the funds to get a license from them. It would be nice to see Microsoft getting a bit more serious about Access developments. They could begin by hiring the guy or gal from Sagekey that wrote the script which turned my mdb compiled mde files into exe. My generic MIS fitted the needs of many small businesses back then, in fact the reason I landed here is that I have a need for it again, and wish to add some more features.

I do hope that MS will invest some intelligent manpower into Access and develope it further. I am sure that they would find that intelligence amongst the previous writers here or at SageKey maybe? My workplace uses Apple, and I looked forward to developing a database for use in the office, but I could never find anything that would give me the facilities of Access and run on a Mac.

There was a glimmer of hope when it became possible to run Parallels or Boot Camp, but it was a bit late for me, and the office was reluctant to use this for an office-wide application. I have been a user and a developer of Access databases for over 20 years for small companies and now my HOA.

I started with Access and the last was All are bit based. Many of the MVP Access gurus voiced the opinion that the bit version was more flexible. The reason I stayed with the bit was I found that the the bit versions were not computable with the 64 bit.

This recently hit home in a sobering and frustrating way. My trusty HP Laptop finally died and I had to get a new one.

It seems that the default Operating system is Windows 11 64 bit and in my case included a free one year subscription to MS formerly MS Office I happily set up the new unit and alas, none of my databases would load.

My new laptop is also a bit system. I deleted the bit MS and installed the bit version. I soon learned that you cannot run a bit program on a bit OS. So I need to change the OS to Windows 11 32 in order to provide any support to my clients. There is no easy conversion. Access bit runs happily on Windows bit. I have several applications that do just that. Microsoft have now changed their recommendation, but my customers have lots of apps using Access bit on Windows bit.

However, if you then change to Access bit and use Windows APIs, you may well need to do some tweaking to get them to work. My experience with popular open source software is that the timeline for fixes and upgrades is significantly faster than with profit-driven companies.

I beg to differ. Yes, popular open source software fixes and upgrades are fast. Not so much or non-existant for projects that are less popular; e. Symphytum, Kexi. Sometimes things get fixed quickly. Only if the developer is still actively involved. Some open source projects die when the owner moves on to other things. I still Access all the time, both in the old version and in the latest version in Office I use it for combining data from different sources, creating tools to edit large groups of data, or creating individual and personalised reports from large databases.

I would miss it tremendously. For visualizing data from different data sources for sure PowerBI is the Microsoft preferred solution nowadays. But still, if you consider the proprietary data format not giving a path for transition from access to a successor I get uncomfortable considering that this database should be good for the next 20years.

I have used several existing products in the past 20! With a bit of study you can create anything you want. I have been using Access since the 90s.

Then images were so slow to load on a desk top computer but I persevered. With Access I still decided against loading images into the database and simply command-button linked the individual image files using a bit of vBasic code that calls free image handling software.

Works great and keeps the database compact. You hit the nail on the head! I have used MS Access since it came out. It is a bricks and mortar application that can do anything you can dream up. Nothing can touch it. The only significant con I have ever had was the lack of being able to port a full featured VBA app to the web.

There are some workarounds. I will keep using it to deliver full featured customized apps at a fraction of the time, cost and hassle of most other tools. Well said, Mark. It is often the guys in IT who promulgate this anti-Access storyline.

No one can articulate why. But it must be done. Free trial on their website. The online community shoutout to StackOverflow especially is great. I would dread having to create forms and reports, and deal with other apps in any other program. Almost anything is possible with VBA. I have created a library which, in part via Windows API, handles a number of useful things such as localisation, connections to open source databases, security, etc.

The future may be more front-end than back-end, at least for developers, but I think it will remain in the desktop environment. But the lack of Web functionality today is an enormous limitation. Personally, I have looked at dozens of products, but I have found very little that can worthily replace it in allowing the development of Web applications.

For me, it is unthinkable to throw away hard-earned VB and VB. NET skills to develop pre-packaged applications on clouds whose location is often unknown. No-code products are too simplistic and low-code products often have pitfalls that make them not as simple as a RAD should be. Does anyone remember Foxpro? I work for a nasdaq listed global company and in my team we work on data sets, dashboards and reporting.

I still use access to make it easy for our team to link data, UI forms to interact with data and VBA to validate business rules about the data. The biggest advantage of Access over python, and other tools is rapid application development. It has a dbms; a VBA scripting environment that supports procedural modules and object-oriented classes; a visual UI to rapidly create tables, views, macros and table relationships; a method for executing table-level data validation so that invalid records are immediately checked before it is written; and of course — a fantastic and easy to use UI Forms builder to make it easy for users to interact with the data.

The alternative to this is using multiple tools and programming languages which can be time consuming to build, test, integrate, roll-out and maintain. The alternatives may also be costly Oracle, SQL, MySQL etc and require costly personel as it would require someone with skills in various tools and programming languages in comparison to someone who knows Access and VBA.

The reality is, the vast majority of corporations run on excel and make decisions using excel and PowerPoint. By all means, Python and others are good. But no other app so far can beat Access. A business that wants internal ability to tailor their system as they require and not depend on a group of developers to tell the company what it requires.

Are future predictions still relevant? FileMaker pro and Alpha software are alternatives to Access. They have been around longer than Access and are still current. I have developed basic applications with all three. In the old days it was pretty expensive to add components that were beyond my skill level , like a scheduling calendar for instance.

There are so many no code applications in the market now, that have these features built in. Access etc. How can you build a basic business app without calculated fields! At first, yes, it has drawbacks stuck on windows, web shortcomings, 2GB limitation , but it offers. I wonder, which of the alternatives give a similar offering, beyond simple list designers? It is a fact though, that millions of SMBs out there, the backbone of economy, find it irreplaceable and obviously, this is the reason why MS is keeping it alive.

Needless to say, there are a lot of people out there who rely on Access, as well as the number of developers who find the potential task of having to convert all of the existing Access systems to a new platform, financially daunting, to say the least. Access is dying but that decision was made nearly 20 years ago. Microsoft has made no substantive changes to Access. Access is still limited to 64k rows. Databases are limited to 2GB.

A normal progress of development would have had more data tools and fewer data size limitations. So there was NO development worth spit. Access is dead of intentional Manual Strangulation.

Are you kidding me? It has been my bread and butter, but in the last several years, I have heard from clients who believe it is a dinosaur. That makes me sad. Yes, MS missed the boat on creating a successful web-based program. But not all companies need that. And with the better remote options, like Team Viewer or whatever, working virtually on your desktop has come a long way. And linking up to a sharepoint or SQL backend, gives you additional options.

But I am biased. I had done much work with Appleworks — a flat file database in the days when RAM on computers was measured in kb rather than mb or gb. Needless to say, I soon outgrew it and needed a relational database for what I was building.

Originally I tried FoxPro, which I found unintelligible at that stage. If there are people in your organization who have an earlier version of Access, you should consider whether using an. If your Access solution uses the replication feature, you will need to re-create the solution without replication if you want to use the.

User-level security The. User-level security is no longer effective for data security, as its security method is now obsolete and easily compromised. However, user-level security can improve usability by keeping things simple for people — for example, if someone has no business reason to use a particular form, you could hide the form from them. If you have an Access solution that relies on user-level security to improve usability, you might want to keep using the.

To convert an. Important: The following procedure is for. In the Open dialog box, select and open the database that you want to convert. In the Save As dialog box, in the File name box, enter a file name or use the file name supplied. Save a database or an object in a different format. Convert a database to the. Convert an.