Larry Linson said:
"Kit" wrote
I strongly recommend against it.
Hmm. I guess I was thinking that since you said, "There is a reasonably
competent Form Wizard. Just create a new Form and choose the style that you
want. If you have table Lookup fields they'll be added to the form as combo
boxes automatically," that having them created in table view would make my
life easier even if one shouldn't actually use them in the table view. My
assumption being that the combo box form of the lookup fields in form view
doesn't have the drawbacks mentioned for the tables version. I could then
delete them from the tables version afterwards. Of course, I could be
totally wrong.
I also strongly recommend against users entering/updating data in datasheet
view -- there are too many things they can inadvertently/accidentally do
wrong.
Well, I guess we have to start somewhere. That was the main way of entering
data taught in Access 1, though it did start and go into forms, and a little
more was added in Access 2. (Our student manuals are Access 2000 Level 1 and
2 by Jeanne S. Strong. We have Access 2003 on our system here at work.)
And, of course, when my other, untrained coworkers come by a database,
tables are what they recognize first since they've been doing everything in
Excel.
Eventually I want to be able to set up button-driven menu's like some of the
databases that can be created with the wizard. There's one for event
management that we've already used for a boat cruise we did.
The good news is, most of the databases are trivial. One-time events, tent
cards for brown bag lunch attendees -- i.e., things that if other users
screwed up in datasheet view, it would not be the end of the world.
I will slowly work on a purchasing database (something that I'd already made
and honed in FileMaker), but that's something only I'd be using until the
kinks were worked out. (Right now everything's tracked with big, 3-ring
binders ... it's not even in a database.)
And, finally, I recommend that you complete learning Access... at
least to the point of knowing what a Combo Box is and why you'd use it...
before you try to create database applications for others. That's something
like trying to write a novel for grownups after completing Grades 1 and 2 of
elementary school.
Unfortunately, I don't have that luxory. Even though I am a novice Access
user, I am the computer expert in my department. Up to now, I've been
'cheating' by using my own copy of FileMaker here and getting what needs to
be done accomplished, but the drawback is that no one else can access the
databases because only my computer has FileMaker, and the budget is so tight
it's harder to justify our buying enough copies for everyone.
My goal is to get people to stop using Excel for everything.
There are quite a number of good self-study books from which you can learn
Access, provided you work the exercises, and try what they discuss.
I'll see if we have a budget for that, or maybe one of our libraries has a
copy.
They are not, obviously, a complete set of training. I'd suggest you don't
rely on classes / courses, but check out the self-study books listed above.
Access, once you stop hoping that it will BE FileMaker, you'll find, also
has an easy-to-use interface and a very broad range of capability. It covers
the whole range from direct end-user use all the way to being a great
development tool for client applications to server databases.
The main things that are slow to do have to do with layouts and forms which
are areas that FileMaker spent a lot of time making tools for.
Once I get a good template set up, things should go more quickly.
