My new series of YouTube videos is an introduction to Microsoft Access for absolute beginners who have never used Access before. If you are in the position of needing to learn Access fast or are curious about what you can do with Microsoft’s desktop database software, this series will provide you with a great introduction…
All posts in Microsoft Access
Helping Users Work With Subforms in Microsoft Access
Creating an Access application for other people means anticipating how the users are going to interact with your program. Without clear direction from the program or you, users can be easily confused by even simple things like the order in which data is to be entered. One of the basic tools in Access is the…
How to Programmatically Relink Tables in Microsoft Access / VBA
Several years ago, I designed a Microsoft Access application called JobSearch Plus for managing job leads during an employment search. It was a split application, meaning that the tables were stored in one Access file, the back-end, and everything else was in the front-end file with table links to the other one. JobSearch Plus was…
How To Create a Dynamic Search Filter on a Microsoft Access Form
Best practice when retrieving data in Microsoft Access or any database, for that matter, is to limit the amount of data that you pull at any one time. This means using the proper filters and limiting the number of fields retrieved. Often, you still end up with a lot of information to look through anyway.…
How to Dynamically Set the Report RecordSource in Microsoft Access
One of the steps for creating a report in Microsoft Access is to define where the data is coming from. This is done through the report’s Record Source property which can be a table or standalone query in the database or a SQL statement as shown in the screenshot below. Usually, this is defined when the…
What is Referential Integrity?
One of the fundamental differences between an Excel spreadsheet and a Microsoft Access or SQL Server database is the database’s ability to group data by subject into tables and create links between that information. This type of organization enables the user to store large amounts of data and retrieve specific information quickly by writing queries that…
Splitting a Database in Microsoft Access
Microsoft Access is unique among all of the Microsoft Office applications in that it can be used to create entire applications that contain large storehouses of data, versatile data entry forms and sophisticated reports to present the data in a variety of ways. It also goes beyond other applications such as Microsoft Excel in that a…
“Microsoft Access has stopped working” – fixing corrupt files
Summary Occasionally, when you’re making a lot of design changes to a Microsoft Access database, Access might start crashing when you’re working with that specific database file or when trying to enter the VBA environment with ALT-F11. This leaves you unable to investigate the issue or make further changes. It can be a sign that there are errors within the project’s…
Adding Passswords to Microsoft Access Switchboard Options
The Switchboard Manager in Microsoft Access makes it easy to create a system of menus that will enable your users to navigate through your application. It also relieves you of the need to manage multiple menu forms and macro calls. Sometimes, however, you might want to keep all but a few users out of specific…
Using Visual Studio to Manage Your Data
(This article was updated in August 2018 for use with Visual Studio 2017.) Moving Beyond Microsoft Access I’ve written a lot about Microsoft Access over the years and still believe it’s a great training ground for people who want to learn to design database applications. Its user-friendly interface provides an easy learning curve and introduction…