My beef with Microsoft products generally has always been that they're over-programmed and lacking in flexibility. There's always too much stuff and you can't scale down. The new Access has some database structures set-up and they're actually useable. There's asset tracking, contact management, event management, expenses, inventory control, order entry, resource scheduling, service call management and others. I'm using the contact management and haven't had to make too many changes. In addition, the pre-configured structures use standard features that even a non-expert like myself can understand and modify. For example, I had no trouble getting rid of a few fields and adding others. Compare this with trying to change the MS Word templates where any change seems to completely screw up the whole template.
Look for more information on MS Access and how to use it on this part of the MS site. The only thing that is still annoying about this program is that you need a pretty powerful computer to run it well - I find it is slow at under 400 MHz processor speed and 128 MB memory although it will still run.
I still like my old database, which was the real thing - Dbase for Windows - but the new Access will let me deal more efficiently with many groups in one big database and still work with the different groups, such as my Suite101 editors, differently according to their characteristics. All my e-mail addresses will be in one place for example but the same database will still keep track of passwords for my Internet service customers, warranty information for my computer customers and delivery details for my suppliers. And I didn't have to come up with the structure myself.
Go To Page: 1
