Access™ 2007 VBA Bible: For Data-Centric Microsoft® Office Applications

Chapter 1. Storing and Displaying Data in Access

IN THIS CHAPTER

• A brief history of Office data exchange

• Storing data in Access

• Displaying Access data in forms and reports

• Working with rich text in Memo fields

• New report interactivity

• Using Access as a control center for working with Office documents

Since its earliest days—about 14 years ago—Access has been a relational database program, storing data in tables and using its own queries, forms, and reports to sort, filter, display, and print data. With successive Office versions, moving data among Office components (especially Word, Excel, and Outlook) has become so much easier that it is now often more efficient to use another Office component rather than an Access report for a task such as printing letters or analyzing numeric data.

Additionally, using other Office components to display or print data from Access makes the data stored in Access tables more widely accessible. Many Office users have an edition of Office that doesn't include Access—but they all have Word and Excel, and many also have Outlook, so they can easily work with Word documents, Outlook messages or appointments, and Excel worksheets, filled with data from Access tables.

Whether you plan to present your data as an Access report, PivotChart, or PivotTable; or a Word document or Excel worksheet, the data is stored in Access tables, and entered and edited in Access forms.

A Brief History of Office Data Exchange

As the Windows operating system has progressed from Windows ...