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Free training courses for Access 2007 and Access 2003

Today’s guest writer is Colin Wilcox from the Access content team.

Hi, all:

I’m Colin, and I write online training courses for Access. These are self-paced courses that you take in your browser. You can start or stop them at any time, and most courses have hands-on practice sessions. Even better, they’re free.

We currently have 9 courses for Access 2007 and 18 courses for Access 2003. We group them (roughly) for beginning, intermediate, and advanced users. Here’s the current lists of courses and related video demos for Access 2007:

Beginning

Course What you'll learn
Choose between Access and Excel When to use Access and when to use Excel. This course helps you answer that essential question so you don't set off in the wrong direction.
Get to know Access 2007 Access basics, how to download and use templates, how to create and use forms and reports.

Up to speed with Access 2007

-and-

Demo: Up to speed with Access 2007

 Brief lessons in the Ribbon, Quick Access toolbar, and Microsoft Office Button, plus working with file formats.

Demo: Meet the Navigation Pane

-and-

Take charge of your database with the Navigation Pane

 A tour of the Navigation Pane. The second link is the training course. You watch the video and have a chance to practice.

Intermediate

Course What you'll learn
Easy Access with templates I: Create a database Create a database quickly by downloading a ready-made database template. All you'll need to do is enter the data.
Easy Access with Templates II: Modify a database Make modifications to the database that you created from a template.
Datasheets I: Create a table by entering data A quick, easy way to create a simple table, just by entering data.
Datasheets II: Sum, sort, filter, and find your data How to use a new feature called the Totals row, plus built-in sorting and filtering tools.
Datasheets III: Make data easier to read by formatting columns and rows How to change the visual look and feel of your table and data.
Import data from Excel to a new table in Access A fast, accurate way to move data from Excel to Access.

Advanced

Course What you'll learn
Demo: Select the right form view The differences between the various form views, and when to use each.

You’ll find similar groups of the Access 2003 courses here.

Currently, a lot of the courses are pretty basic—knowing when to use a relational table structure or a flat list, how to use Datasheet view, that sort of thing. We’d love to hear your suggestions for new courses, basic or not. And we’re always interested in hearing your feedback about what we’ve published.

Posted: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 3:51 PM by Clint Covington

Comments

grovelli said:

Splendid! Can you prepare a course in manipulating tick labels on Pivot Charts axes using VBA? Or a course in importing attribute-centric XML in Access? Or two more describing how to use shaped recordsets and nested sets?

# June 4, 2008 3:21 PM

Andrew said:

Among other things, I use Access to automate complex data processing typically done in Excel. This is a huge time saver every time my company changes something and unexpected processing requirements crop up.

Perhaps you could include an 'expert' section or something that shows how to perform inter-record lookups with multiple queries among other things. Many people simply succumb to performing the same 3 hour task over and over in Excel rather than figure out how to automate it in Access.

# June 6, 2008 4:40 PM
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