Alice Colyar

Have you been contemplating creating a database using Access but do not know where to begin?  

 Access 2007 can help you track and report information with ease. Get started quickly with template databases that you can customize to your needs. Collect information through forms in e-mail or import data from external applications such as Excel. Create and edit detailed reports that display sorted, filtered, and grouped information in a way that helps you make sense of the data for informed decision-making. 

Here are ten reasons that you may want to make Access an indispensable tool in your office in 2010. 

1)       Get better results faster with the Office user interface.   Access 2007 provides a completely new experience with the new navigation pane, and tabbed window views.

2)       Get started quickly using prebuilt solutions. With a number of database templates, you can start tracking your information immediately. Forms and reports are already built for your convenience, and you can easily customize them to meet your business needs. Contacts, issue tracking, project tracking, and asset tracking are only few of the solutions included in Office Access 2007.

 3)       Create multiple reports with different views of the same information. Creating a report in Office Access 2007 is truly a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) experience. You can save various views for different audiences in the same report. The new grouping pane and filtering and sorting capabilities help you display the information so you can make more informed business decisions.   

4)       Create tables quickly as you would in an Excel spreadsheet.   With automatic data type detection, table creation in Office Access 2007 is as easy as working with a Microsoft Office Excel table. Type your information and Office Access 2007 will recognize whether it is a date, currency, or another common data type. You can even paste an entire Excel table into Office Access 2007 to begin tracking the information with the power of a database. 

5)       Two new field types for even richer scenarios.  Access 2007 enables new field types such as attachments and multi-value fields. You can now attach any document, image, or spreadsheet to any record in your application. With the multi-value field, you can now select more than one value (for example, assign a task to more than one person) in each cell. 

6)       Collect and update your information directly from the source.  With Office Access 2007, you can create forms using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 or HTML to gather information for your database. You can then send this form via e-mail and use their responses to populate and update your Access table to eliminate the need to retype any information. 

7)       Share your information with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.  Share your Access information with coworkers using Windows SharePoint Services and Office Access 2007. With the power of both applications, your coworkers can access and edit the data and view real-time reports directly through a Web interface. 

8)       Track Windows SharePoint Services lists with the rich client capabilities of Access 2007.   Use Access 2007 as your client interface to analyze and create reports from Windows SharePoint Services lists. You can even take the list offline, and then synchronize any changes when you reconnect to the network, making it easy for you to work with your data at any time. 

9)       Move data to Windows SharePoint Services for better manageability.   Make your data more transparent by moving it to Windows SharePoint Services.  You can routinely back up the data on the server, recover deleted data from the recycle bin, track revision history, and set access permissions, so you can better manage your information. 

10)   Access and use information from multiple sources.   With Access 2007 you can link tables to your database from other Access databases, Excel spreadsheets, Windows SharePoint Services sites, ODBC data sources, Microsoft SQL Server databases, and other data sources. You can then use these linked tables to easily create reports so you can base your decisions on a more comprehensive set of information.