Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2003 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You!
  • Introduction
  • Who Should Read This Book?
  • What This Book Does for You
  • Can This Book Really Teach Office 2003 in 24 Hours?
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Part I. Working with Office 2003
  • Hour 1. Getting Acquainted with Office 2003
  • Part II. Processing with Word 2003
  • Hour 2. Welcome to Word 2003
  • Hour 3. Formatting with Word 2003
  • Hour 4. Managing Documents and Customizing Word 2003
  • Hour 5. Advanced Word 2003
  • Part III. Computing with Excel 2003
  • Hour 6. Understanding Excel 2003 Workbooks
  • Hour 7. Restructuring and Editing Excel 2003 Worksheets
  • Hour 8. Using Excel 2003
  • Hour 9. Formatting Worksheets to Look Great
  • Hour 10. Charting with Excel 2003
  • Part IV. Presenting with Flair
  • Hour 11. PowerPoint 2003 Presentations
  • Hour 12. Editing and Arranging Your Presentations
  • Hour 13. PowerPoint 2003 Advanced Features
  • Hour 14. Animating Your Presentations
  • Part V. Organizing with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 15. Communicating with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 16. Planning and Scheduling with Outlook 2003
  • Part VI. Tracking with Access 2003
  • Hour 17. Access 2003 Basics
    • Database Basics
    • Looking at Access
    • Creating a Database
    • Summary
    • Q&A
  • Hour 18. Entering and Displaying Access 2003 Data
  • Hour 19. Retrieving Your Data
  • Hour 20. Reporting with Access 2003
  • Part VII. Combining Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 21. Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 22. Creating Web Content with Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint
  • Part VIII. Publishing Eye-Catching Documents
  • Hour 23. Publishing with Flair Using Publisher 2003
  • Hour 24. Adding Art to Your Publications
  • Part IX. Appendixes
  • Appendix B. Business Contact Manager and Office Extras
  • Part X. Bonus Hours
  • Hour 25. Using FrontPage 2003 for Web Page Design and Creation
  • Hour 26. Managing Your Web with FrontPage

Database Basics

Whereas previous hours of this book began by introducing you to the program right away, this hour begins by explaining database concepts. You need to learn how a database management system organizes data before you jump into Access.

A database is an organized collection of data. Access is called a database management system because it enables you to create, organize, manage, and report from the data stored in databases.

A database typically contains related data. In other words, you might create a home-office database with your household budget but keep another database to record your rare-book collection titles and their worth. In your household budget, you might track expenses, income, bills paid, and so forth, but that information does not overlap the book-collection database. Of course, if you buy a book, both databases might show the transaction, but the two databases would not overlap.

Technically, a database does not have to reside on a computer. Any place you store data in some organized format, such as a name and address directory, could be considered a database. In most cases, however, the term database is reserved for organized, computerized data.

When you design a database, consider its scope before you begin. Does your home business need an inventory system? Does your home business need a sales contact? If so, an Access database works well. Only you can decide whether the inventory and the sales contacts should be part of the same system or separate, unlinked systems. The database integration of inventory with the sales contacts requires much more work to design, but your business requirements might necessitate the integration. For example, you might need to track which customers bought certain products in the past.

Database Tables

If you threw your family's financial records into a filing cabinet without organizing them, you would have a mess. That is why most people organize their filing cabinets by putting related records into file folders. Your insurance papers go in one folder; your banking records go in another.

Likewise, you cannot throw your data into a database without separating the data into related groups. These groups are called tables; a table is analogous to a file folder in a filing cabinet. Figure 17.1 illustrates a set of tables that hold financial information inside a business's database.

Figure 17.1 A database will contain data separated into groups called tables.

A database might contain many tables, each being a further refinement of related data. Your financial database might contain tables for accounts payable, customer records, accounts receivable, vendor records, employee records, and payroll details (such as hours worked during a given time period). The separate tables help you eliminate redundant data; when you produce a payroll report, Access might retrieve some information from your employee table (such as name and pay rate) and some information from your time tables (such as hours worked).

Access stores all tables for a single database in one file that ends with the .mdb extension. By storing the complete database in one file, Access makes it easier for you to copy and back up your database. You never have to specify the .mdb extension when you create a database.

Records and Fields

To keep track of table data, Access breaks down each table into records and fields. In some ways, a table's structure looks similar to an Excel worksheet because of the rows and columns in a worksheet. As Figure 17.2 shows, a table's records are the rows, and a table's fields are the columns. Figure 17.2 shows a checkbook-register table; you usually organize your checkbook register just as you would organize a computerized version of a checkbook, so you will have little problem mastering Access's concepts of records and fields.

Figure 17.2 Tables have records (rows) and fields (columns).

Your table fields contain different data types. As Figure 17.2 shows, one field might hold a text description, whereas another might hold a dollar amount. Every item within the same field must be the same data type, but a table might contain several fields that differ in type. When you design your database, you are responsible for indicating to Access which data type you want for each field in your database tables.

The types of data that you can store in an Access database table are

• Text— Text data consists of letters, numbers, and special characters. You only report text data; you cannot calculate with it. A balance-due field would never be a text data type, but addresses, names, and Social Security numbers are examples of text fields. Generally, you store short text items (names, addresses, cities, product names, and part codes) in text fields.
• Memo— The memo field can hold an extremely large amount of text, including paragraphs. Memo fields consume a lot of space, and not all tables require them. Memos are great for documenting table entries and adding textual data that is free-form. For example, an Evaluation field for an employee database would be a good Memo candidate because you could then make entries that describe the employee's performance.
• Number— A number field holds numbers. Use this field to calculate values.
• Date/Time— These fields hold date and time values (similar to the date and time format in Excel). Access enables you to enter data into date and time fields using many formats. Additionally, Access respects your Windows international settings, so you can enter a date in your country's format.
• Currency— This field holds dollar amounts. Access keeps the dollar amounts rounded to the correct decimal alignment needed to match your currency designation. Access recognizes your Windows international settings and uses international currency amounts when needed.
• AutoNumber— This field holds sequential numbers, a different number for each record in the table.
• Yes/No— These fields hold Yes and No (or True and False) two-pronged values to indicate the existence or absence of an item or to indicate the answer to an implied question. For example, some items in an inventory database might be tagged for a special discount whereas others are not tagged.
• OLE object— This is an embedded object, such as a graph you create in Excel. Your Access databases can hold any kind of OLE-compatible embedded object.
• Hyperlink— This is an Internet Web site address. Such a field can hold an Internet address for a file as well as a network or an intranet address within your system network. When the database user clicks the hyperlink, Access shows the hyperlink's Web page or network file.

Using a Key Field

Every Access table requires a primary key field. The primary key field (often just called a key) is a field that contains a unique value and no duplicate entries. Whereas a table's city field might contain multiple occurrences of the same city name, a key field must be unique for each record. You can designate an existing data field as the table's key field, or you can use the AutoNumber field that Access adds to all tables as the key field.

If you were creating a table to hold employee records, a good key-field candidate would be the employee's Social Security number because each one is unique. If you are not sure that your data contains unique information in any field, specify the AutoNumber field that Access creates as the key. In the AutoNumber field, Access stores a unique number for each table record.

Access uses the key field to find records quickly. When you want to locate an employee's record, for example, search by the employee's key field (the Social Security number). If you search based on the employee's name, you might not find the proper record; two or more employees might be named John Smith, for example.

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