Access 2000 Answers!: Answers (Answers Series)

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Summary: Comprehensive Q&A
Review: Access 2000 Answers! is a comprehensive tool for answering most basic and advanced questions that users generally have about developing and working with databases in Access 2000. It is important to recognize that this is not a manual or a tutorial guide to using Access, but a collection of commonly asked questions and their answers based on data collection from a technical support environment. Considering the cost and time involved in calling tech support these days, this book provides a good place to turn as an alternative. It is broken up into easily manageable sections, and the answers are well written and clearly understandable to most users, provided they have a working knowledge of Windows. It won't answer every possible question but it does a very good job of anticipating what questions you can expect to have and is well worth the investment as a supplementary reference for Access 2000.

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Summary: Help is on the way!
Review: I have been working with Microsoft Office 2000 for over 6 months and sometimes things just don't go the way they are supposed to. In fact there have been times when I can't get anything to work. I've tried to wait on hold for support but time is money. Now I have a first rate book to help out when a phone call would take to long.

Access 2000 support has been never been easier to get and the cost is far less than the time spent on the phone. Hundreds of questions are answered on every level from beginner to expert and one just about every topic.

You get to start off with the 10 most frequently asked questions. From there you are working in Access Basics, tables, queries, forms reports sharing data, macros, charts, the internet and visual basic applications. Over 400 pages of helpful information right at your fingertips.

Included in the book are examples of coding, pictures of the application fixes, diagrams and tips. This book is certainly one for the help desk support or on sight technician. Stop waiting for someone to answer your call get the information you need with this book.

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Summary: Access 2000 at its very best!
Review: I have been working with Microsoft Office 2000 for over 6 months andsometimes things just don't go the way they are supposed to. Infact there have been times when I can't get anything to work. I've tried to wait on hold for support but time is money. Now I have a first rate book to help out when a phone call would take to long.

Access 2000 support has been never been easier to get and the cost is far less than the time spent on the phone. Hundreds of questions are answered on every level from beginner to expert and one just about every topic.

You get to start off with the 10 most frequently asked questions. From there you are working in Access Basics, tables, queries, forms reports sharing data, macros, charts, the internet and visual basic applications. Over 400 pages of helpful information right at your fingertips.

Included in the book are examples of coding, pictures of the application fixes, diagrams and tips....this book is certainly one for the help desk support or on sight technician. Stop waiting for someone to answer your call get the information you need with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the reading
Review: I like to consider myself an intermediate-level programmer. I develop in Access and VB... have been for years. I have purchased MANY books in that time. My own personal philosophy about books is that if you can solve one problem in your application, with the information from any given book, it was worth the effort of reading it and the expense to buy it. Well, this book is worth it's weight in gold. It helped me solve many problems, answered many questions, and generally enlightened me about several things. It's a little difficult to find specific answers and it is geared more towards the "beginner-level" programmer, but all-in-all a great book. Well worth the [money]!

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Summary: Access 2000 Answers!
Review: If you are looking for a book to provide you the answers you need in Access, this is the book. It provides answers in a simple to understand form.

I purchased this book after owning the Excel version because of it's easy, concise format. These books provide answers to questions that a lot of other books skip over.

It is one reference book anyone using Access should own.

Having some knowledge of Access and learning more every day, I find this book very informative.

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Summary: Access 2000 Answers!
Review: If you are looking for a book to provide you the answers you need in Access, this is the book. It provides answers in a simple to understand form.

I purchased this book after owning the Excel version because of it's easy, concise format. These books provide answers to questions that a lot of other books skip over.

It is one reference book anyone using Access should own.

Having some knowledge of Access and learning more every day, I find this book very informative.

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Summary: Great help but layout isn't the best
Review: The book is a great help to the beginner and intermediate user of Microsoft Access 2000, but my one complaint about it is that everything is based on a question--hence the title of the book. When I purchased the book, I did not think that the entire book would be 400 pages of FAQ's, but I was wrong. Don't get me wrong, they are extremely helpful, but now and then, I'd like a walk-through and a tutorial rather than just a Q&A session.

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Summary: A well-designed tool, not a tutorial or catch-all solution
Review: This is an excellent resource...as long as you understand its scope and purpose.

WHAT THE BOOK IS: It's accurately described on the front cover as "Tech Support at Your Fingertips". It very effectively uses a question and answer format, with many of the questions beginning with "How do I..." or "How can I..." The answers are to the point, but not sketchy. The book's sections and chapters are organized around the features of Access: forms, tables, queries, etc. So it's usually quite easy to locate your question and its corresponding answer. And the quality of the writing is consistently good.

It might be true that all the very practical information contained in this book can also be found in the Access online help system that's included with Access software. But the book seems to be much better organized. That, combined with the paper format, make for a significant time-savings (and much less frustration).

WHAT THE BOOK IS NOT: A step-by-step tutorial on learning to use Access - or (more importantly) a tutorial on database design. Knowledge of that latter topic is an absolutely essential pre-requisite to creating well-designed tables in Access (or any other relational database system). The authors are very good about *distinguishing* database design from using Access itself. Early in the book, they provide a one-page introduction to the topic, emphasize its importance, and recommend that the reader become familiar with the topic if he isn't already.

On that latter topic, I highly recommend "Access Database Design and Programming", by Steven Roman (which covers Access 2000). It's an O'Reilly book (one of the better computer book publishers), and Roman does a terrific job of explaining database design *concepts*, then explaining their *implementation* in Access. However, Roman is intentionally light (or silent) on the subject of Access details such as forms and tables - so the two books complement each other exceedingly well.

Once I started reading Roman's book, the Answers book no longer seemed confusingly devoid of context. Instead, it seemed focussed and to the point - because I began to approach it with the necessary background understanding. As a bonus, if you expect to do programming in Access using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), the second half of Roman's book will also come in handy.

I fully expect that this "Answers" book and Roman's book, used in tandem, will be all I need to become a solid Access developer. At a later date, when I need to look into detailed fine points of Access usage and programming, I may acquire the highly acclaimed "Access 2000 Developer's Handbook, 2-Volume Set" by Litwin et al.

I give the "Answers" book five stars. When its intended purpose is understood, it's a powerful reference tool.

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Summary: Access 2000 ? The quick fix!
Review: You are busy making a Report that will show the Sales Orders from this week sorted by the Customer's Postal Code, Product Group and Order Amount. You want the report to calculate the average size of orders for each major city. You know this can be done, but you can't quite figure out how to do it! It's in these situations you will use a book like Access 2000 Answers!

The book is divided into 16 chapters organized by subject and level, easily accessed through a well-organized index. Some of the solutions are very basic other more advanced using VBA programming, and throughout the book you'll find these snippets of VBA code to copy and use in your database application, most of these are useful and easy to follow.

To use a book like this one holds a certain risk. It will enable the inexperienced developer to use some of the more fun and advanced features, which we all want to do. But do you know why Access 2000 does what is does? Do you know enough Relational Database and Programming theory to recognize when to make use of VBA code and how to debug the code, so it doesn't create havoc in your application?

If you want to make use of a certain feature in an Access database application, its not enough to know how, you must also know what other objects its related to and how they affect each other. For this purpose I recommend Applications Development In Access 2000 (ISBN 076007108X) by Dirk Baldwin and David Paradice, which includes 5 different applications to learn from.

An unintentional but added value of the book, is its use as a checklist to estimate your level as an Access developer. But it is of most use for the beginning/intermediate level Access developer with some knowledge of VBA programming.

Access 2000 Answers! will stay on desk and help me, until I know all the answers by heart.