Microsoft Office Access is the best –selling personal computer database management system. What is Access?

What is a database? A database is an organized collection of information about a subject. Examples of databases include an address book, a telephone book, a CD tower full of music CDs, or a filing cabinet full of documents relating to clients.

How is an Access Database Organized? With Access, you can sort, find, analyze, and report on information in your database. When you open a database, you see the Navigation Pane, which displays a list of the objects in the database. The four main types of objects are Tables, Queries, Forms, and Reports.

Tables Store Information All Access database information is stored in tables. Each table contains information about a particular topic. Each row of an Access table is a record. A record is a set of details about a specific item. Each column of an Access table is a field. Fields provide the categories for the details describing each record. Each column is headed by a field name.

Other Database Objects Form: A window showing the data in a table with one record’s fields appearing individually. Forms make it easy to view, input, and edit the data because forms typically show all the information for one record on a single page. Query: a question you ask about the data stored in a database. Report – a formatted printout of the contents of one or more tables in a database.

Access Vocabulary Datasheet – The display of a table’s content in rows and columns; each row is a separate record; and each column contains the field values. Record – A complete set of values for a specific person, place, object, event, or idea. Field – A single piece of information about a person, place, object, event, or idea. Data Types – The type of data that a particular field is designed to hold. Common types include Text, Number, Date ,Memo and Lookup field.

Design view – Access view you use to define or modify a table structure or the properties of the fields in a table. Datasheet view – Access view that shows a table’s content as a datasheet in rows and columns. Primary key – A field, or a collection of fields, whose values uniquely identify each record in a database table. Wildcard – A character (? Or *) that signifies one or more unspecified characters when finding text. Multiple Sort – To use more than one field to sort. If there are duplicates for the first field, the second field is used to organize the records for each set of duplicated values in the first field Sort – To arrange records alphabetically or numerically according to a specific field. Ascending – From A to Z or 0 to 100… Descending – From Z to A or 100… to 0

6. Each row is called a Record Access Layout Screen Shutter Bar 6. Each row is called a Record 2. Navigation Pane 4. Displayed object 5. Each column heading is called a: Field 3. Object Tabs 7. Current Record Box