Welcome! Thank you for selecting this book. We assume you’ve done so because you’re hoping it will explain how to use Microsoft Access 2016, and of course, as the authors, we believe this was a wise decision. We, the authors, base this belief on the fact that both of us have been teaching and using Access for a very long time, and we know how to share what we know with our students.
So what was it that made you seek out a book on Access? It might be that you’ve been asked to use it at work, or perhaps you run your own business or are managing a non-profit organization. If any of these is the case – or if you’re just a regular human with a lot of personal contacts and irons in the fire, you need Access to organize your data. You need it so you can find a name or a transaction in seconds after a few keystrokes, not after minutes spent leafing through your files or swiping apps this way and that on your smartphone. You need it so you can produce reports that make you look like the genius you are. You need it so you can create cool forms that will help your staff enter all the data you’ve got stacked on their desks — and in a way that lets you know the data was entered properly so that it’s accurate and useful. You need Access so you can find little bits of data out of the huge pool of information you need to store. So that’s it. You just need it.
With all the power that Access has (and that it therefore gives you), there comes a small price: complexity. Access isn’t one of those applications you can just sit down and use “right out of the box.” It’s not scarily difficult or anything, but there’s a lot going on — and you need some guidance, some help, and some direction to really use it and make it bend to your will. And that’s where this book — a “reference for the rest of us” — comes in.
So you’ve picked up this book. Hang on to it. Clutch it to your chest and run gleefully from the store, or click the Add to Shopping Cart button and sit back with an expression of satisfaction and accomplishment on your face, because you’ve done a smart thing (if we don’t say so ourselves). When you get home, or when the book arrives in person (or when you download it to your hand-held device), start reading — whether you begin with Chapter 1 or whether you dive in and start with a particular feature or area of interest that’s been giving you fits. Just read, and then go put Access to work for you.
You need to know only a few things about your computer and Windows to get the most out of Access 2016 For Dummies. In the following pages, we presume that you …
want to build your own databases
and/or
Have Windows 7, 8.1, or 10
If your computer uses Windows 98, 2000, or Vista, you can’t run Access 2016.
When something in this book is particularly valuable, we go out of our way to make sure that it stands out. We use these cool icons to mark text that (for one reason or another) really needs your attention. Here’s a quick preview of the ones waiting for you in this book and what they mean.
In addition to the content in this book, you’ll find some extra content available at the www.dummies.com
website:
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/access2016
Online articles covering additional topics at www.dummies.com/extras/access2016
Here you’ll find the articles referred to on the page that introduces each part of the book. So, feel free to visit www.dummies.com/extras/access2016
. You’ll feel at home there … find coffee and donuts … okay, maybe not the coffee and donuts (hard to deliver over the ether), but you can find information about setting up budgets in QBO and details on converting a desktop QuickBooks company to a QBO company.
www.dummies.com/go/access2016
. Here you will find sample files used in Chapters 9 and 17 as well as the Lancaster Food Pantry Access database used throughout the book.www.dummies.com/go/access2016fd
Now nothing’s left to hold you back from the thrills, chills, and power of Access. Hold on tight to your copy of Access 2016 For Dummies and leap into Access. Not sure where to start? See if you spot yourself in these options: