Solve the problems you face today—build career skills for tomorrow—with in-depth, self-paced training for Access 2003, direct from Microsoft.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 5 Ratings

Buy Microsoft Office Access 2003 Step by Step + this book - 2004-04-21
Reviewer Rating:
In my life I never touched Access until few months ago. Although I have a degree in Computer Science, the database I used before are Oracle, and MS SQL at all. Access is a wonderful tool for SMBs, only need few hours to write (in fact, should be click, drag and drop) the applications. and also easy to convert to .sql files.
I bought the Microsoft Office Access 2003 Step by Step first. this book is very good for people never touched Access before. I define this book is a higher level dummy book. you just follow the book. But some time sentence on the books may too considerated for the readers like ask readers to insert the CD-rom.
After I finish this book, you can almost work out most simple database applications. then if you really want to imporve to be professional in Access. then this book is your best choice.
it will introduce most of the special function like Macro and Modules + all the report formats.

Access has its limitation like does not support multiple users. data lenth is only 250 and file size must be less than 1G.
but it is a very simple tools can do some simple professional works. I like it very much, SMBs need it. my suggestion is for newbie of Access, buy the step by step first. then move to this book if you want to improve yourself.
After both of 2 book, that is already enough for you to self study Access. no need other books.

Intermidiate learners, this is for you... - 2004-12-27
Reviewer Rating:
I found this book to be excellent for the levelI'm in. I bought MS Access 2003 Step-by-Step and this is the level right next to it. Very well written and extremelly well organized, this is definitely a work of reference.

Good way to move up to the next level - 2007-01-22
Reviewer Rating:
This book has some characteristics that target beginners, and in theory it could be used by anybody. I think this is partially correct. A few chapters are actually very succinct introductions to Access fundamentals (ch. 2, database design; ch. 3 managing data; ch. 5 form design). However, the tone of the book is clear in chapter 1 where the author introduces command buttons and Visual Basic code -- usually a topic found in the final chapters of books for beginners. Inside Track is really a great book for an strong beginner or intermediate Access user who wants to explore the next level in Access databases. I like this book for several reasons. First, it has a great chapter on introducing Visual Basic code in Access applications. If you've worked at trying to understand VBA you will appreciate this clear presentation of the basic concepts of how to work with this code in Access. Second, it takes the design of forms to a level more advanced than is usual for books like this. For instance, Inside Track gets you using list box input values as criteria in subform queries -- whereas in most Access-for-the-brainless type books you will not even cover using list boxes for collecting variable data in forms at all. Third, Inside Track introduces capabilites of Access not usually mentioned in beginners' books, such as linking an Access project to SQL server database tables, integrating Access with Office 2003, and linking to sharepoint data. It also introduces Access and XML, which is an important technology for data storage and transfer. All in all, I think a real beginner will want to use another book to work on the basics of table design, queries, and reports and forms. But if you are interested in the the next level, this book is a good way to get your feet wet. The territory is advanced, but there is generous explanation as you go. I don't think intermediate is easy to do with Access so I give it lots of credit for filling this important stage in learning Access.

A beginner book.... - 2006-08-23
Reviewer Rating:
If you you are just starting out then this book may work for you. With regard to using the text as a reference or just to brush up on your Access then it failed miserably. Because the practice chapters build on each other, you practically have to work through all of the previous chapters to build up the database, thus if you skip chapters and work on your topic of interests, the database failed because of missing data that was supposedly created during the previous chapters, which is pretty much useless as as brush up text.

Horrible - avoid at all costs - 2006-05-27
Reviewer Rating:
This is one of the worst books I have seen on Access. It's missing entire topics and never offers the reader a complete explanation of Access capabilities. Most Microsoft Press books are bad news and this one is no execption. I should have known better.

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