Access 2003 For Dummies [Paperback]

John Kaufeld (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0764538810 | ISBN-13: 978-0764538810 | Edition: 1

When you hear the word “database,” do your eyes glaze over? Does the mention of fields and tables make your blood pressure skyrocket? Does the idea of entering and using hyperlinks make you hyperventilate?

Whether you’re running a business or a household . . . whether you need to be able to quickly access customer information, your recipe for chicken cacciatore, or the Little League team’s records, Access 2003 holds the key. This friendly guide unlocks the secrets of using Access 2003 to store, manage, organize, reorganize, and use data! It gives you:

• The basics of the whole database concept
• Suggestions for solving problems with Access
• What you need to know to design, build, use, and change Access tables
• Info on the ten most common types of fields
• The scoop on using queries to unearth the answers hiding somewhere in your data
• Guidelines for using the Access report system to make short work of long, previously time-consuming, reports

In the relaxed, comfortable For Dummies style, this book has easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions and lots of screen shots. If you want to create and manage a database for a huge auction house, this guide will get you going . . . going . . .  gone. If you want to create a database for your music collection, it gives you the score then shows you how to use formatting and add graphics to jazz it up. You’ll get the low-down on extracting all kinds of information from databases and putting that information to practical use. You’ll discover how to:

• Use Label Wizard to create mailing labels, file labels, shipping labels, or name tags
• Use Chart Wizard to create line charts, bar, cone, and column charts, pie and donut charts, area charts, and XY and bubble charts
• Use Auto Reports to create columnar or tabular reports and then fine-tune them
• Export reports to Microsoft Word and Excel
• Get your data Web-ready and put it on the Internet in either static or dynamic form
• Build forms with Form Wizard

And speaking of high-tech fun, Access 2003 For Dummies even tells you how to install and use speech recognition software with Access 2003. So if the idea of working with databases has you talking to yourself, this is just the book you need.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Grab your data and get it on the table!

Meet the wizards, ask the right questions, give data a form, and share it online

What? You’re still letting your data run around loose? Grab this book and build a database you can, well, access! John Kaufeld demystifies databases for even the truly timid. You’ll soon be constructing tables, turning out reports, delving into existing databases, and querying with the best of them, all with the greatest of ease.

The Dummies Way

• Explanations in plain English
• "Get in, get out" information
• Icons and other navigational aids
• Tear-out cheat sheet
• Top ten lists
• A dash of humor and fun

About the Author

John Kaufeld has written all previous editions of Access For Dummies as well as several other books. John also operates shippertools.com, an online shipping assistant.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 1 edition (October 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764538810
• ISBN-13: 978-0764538810
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Computers & Technology > Databases > Database Management Systems

More About the Author

John Kaufeld makes complex things easy, and helps parents -- especially dads -- learn to connect with their kids through board games.

And he loves every minute of it.

He's a best-selling author, speaker, trainer, consultant, board gamer, dad, and all-around geek. He also believes passionately in the power of board games as a tool for connecting with family and friends, but more about that later.

Back in 1993, he started writing about America Online, Microsoft Access, computer games, tabletop games, and more in the popular "...For Dummies" line of computer books, eventually churning out over 25 books in the line, along with a few random ones for other publishers. Over the years, his titles sold more than 2.8 million books in over 15 languages around the world.

John started writing as a high school stringer for The Republic (Columbus, IN). At about the same time, he expanded into radio as a weekend DJ for WWWY Radio (also in Columbus, IN).

In college, he scrambled for stories as the weekend news anchor for WLBC Radio (Muncie, IN) and the afternoon news editor for WBST Radio (the Ball State University PBS station).

During his first stint in Corporate America, John spent 10 years in various Information Systems and System Development jobs. His second term in Corporate America saw him working in communication, publicity, and marketing for a national trade association, a regional bank, a high-end manufacturing company.

Along the way, John wandered into the social game industry. As a kid, he and his father played many rounds of Hasbro's "Monopoly" (consistently using the wrong rules), and actually finished the game two or three times.

Then he discovered German board games (also known as "Eurogames"), and his gaming world -- and parenting style -- changed forever.

These days, you can often find John in the board game areas at Gen Con and other game conventions. He indulges in "Puerto Rico," "Agricola," "Race for the Galaxy," and just about any train game that wanders past (especially Empire Builder). If you see him, definitely say hi. After all, he never bites. (Well, at least not since the therapy.)

He's current finishing a Master of Arts in Professional Communication at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, and is on the university staff in marketing and social media. He also freelances for several national and regional publications.

You can email him at [e-mail], the email address that launched a few million books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MS Office Dummy, January 18, 2006

By 

M. Davis (New Mexico, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Access 2003 For Dummies (Paperback)

I've taught database theory at university Master's level, used MySql in a
UNIX/Linux environment, and have a Ph.D. in computer science. I don't need to
learn SQL or how to program, but I did need to know how to get something done
with this MS Office product, and quickly. This book was a perfect fit. It's
not strong on VBA or other programming hooks, or what Microsoft calls database
projects, and it's no substitute for learning the fundamentals of database
design and use (though it does have some very good introductory material), it
is quite comprehensible and thorough as a tutorial, guidebook, and reference
on the user interface that is unique to MS Access. Access is a big
application and this is, appropriately, a big book. Again, it was just what I
needed. Regarding another reviewer's dislike of the cute jokes, it's really
not bad at all, a real relief compared to the otherwise excellent O'Reilly
`animal series' computer books.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Access 2003 for Dummies, September 24, 2005

By 

Dennis Maloon (San Leandro, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Access 2003 For Dummies (Paperback)

Though I've not worked all the way through the book yet, it appears to offer what I expected. Sometimes the "cute" remarks that the "For Dummies" series seems to expect of all their authors get a bit old, but by and large the book appears to be a good reference for a first-time database writer. I previously wrote a fairly complex business database in Paradox, and so much of the information I'm looking for is "how" rather than "what" or "why" with respect to writing databases in Access. I've always found the "For Dummies" series of books a good value, and this one is no exception. I'm sure there are levels of depth that this book is going to skip over -- I've seen little reference to VBA programming, for example. Still, a person writing an application requiring those degrees of depth and security is probably not working in Access to begin with. Such a person is probably not self-taught. Nor are they likely to be affordable to a small company such as I work for.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Fast Way to Get Started, May 19, 2006

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Access 2003 For Dummies (Paperback)

This is a quick and dirty guide to using Access to get information into and out of a database. Access is part of Microsoft's Office Suite. It's designed for small, personal use database applications. This book fits that philosophy quite well. It uses the front end philosophy that Microsoft has done so well to enable a database to be designed, an input form to be created and an output report to be generated.

The list of things that this book (and to a lessor extent Access itself) doesn't do is long. There is very little theory on database design. There isn't much on SQL, the language of databases.

The idea here is to get a fairly simple, desktop you might call it, database up and being productive very quickly. And at this task the book does quite well. I also think that this is a good way to get started in learning about databases. If you subsequently find that your needs are more than you can get out of Access, you'll have a bit of background that makes the jump to a real database like Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server that much easier.