Advanced Functionality in MS Access

Welcome to the world of MS Access. MS Access is a wonderful program that allows intermediate office users to create simple applications for storing data and manipulating it.

Most users want to do similar things. They want to have combo boxes that filter other combo boxes (commonly called cascading combo boxes.) They may want to filter a form by a list box. Some may want to have special happen when a user clicks a button.

MS Office applications, in general, do not require you to understand programming or a theory of sorts to implement advanced features. But for MS Access it is imperative that beginner users understand that to get the above advanced functionality out of Access they must begin by learning the three basic major keys to Access development.

Three of the major keys to MS Access are VBA [Visual Basic for Applications], SQL [structured query language], and Relational Database Theory (these three not necessarily in this order.)

There are plenty of books on VBA, and SQL. The topic of Relational Databases is peppered throughout these two books when they relate to MS Access.

It's very difficult to expect advanced functionality out of MS Access without trying to grasp these three keys.

For beginner developers/users who desire to get more out of MS Access it would benefit them greatly to investigate these three topics in detail.

Thanks,

Your friend Chris