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OK...I'm trying to learn to use Access and it is frankly kicking my butt. I want to get a book or how to guide or something on this. But I don't want to waste my money; does anyone here have advice on a good one?

Thanks
Paul

paulWTAMU wrote:

OK...I'm trying to learn to use Access and it is frankly kicking my butt. I want to get a book or how to guide or something on this. But I don't want to waste my money; does anyone here have advice on a good one?

Thanks
Paul

What are you trying to do? Are you just trying to learn the basics or do you have some specific thing in mind? Access has a ton of uses... are you developing a stand-alone database? Are you connecting to an external data source? If so, what kind? It's easy to get overwhelmed with Access if you go into it with the notion of trying to learn everything at once.

This is a pretty good book for getting started: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Access-2010-Step/dp/0735626928/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354135718&sr=1-2

This one is good if you're a little more advanced: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Access-2010-Inside-Out/dp/0735626855/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354135789&sr=1-3

some of the reports we run are getting too big for excel; pulling records of 1.5 million calls breaks it and cross referencing all the data in excel gets clunky, even with pivot tables, when you're talking hundreds of thousands of records.

I used lynda to learn Access. Maybe your library has a free subscription -- mine did, IIRC.