Datasheet

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Chapter 1: Getting to Know Access 2010
✓ Big databases are hard to wade through when you want to find some-
thing. Access provides several tools for sorting, searching, and creating
your own specialized tools (known as queries) for finding the elusive
single record or group of records you need.
✓ Access saves time by giving you new uses for existing tools you may
have used to import data from other sources — such as Excel work-
sheets (if you started in Excel and maxed out its usefulness as a data-
storage device) and Word tables. This saves you from re-entering all
your data and allows you to keep multiple data sources consistent.
Creating databases with multiple tables
Whether your database holds 100 records or 1,000 records (or more), if you
need to keep separate tables and relate them for maximum use of the infor-
mation, you need a relational database — and that’s Access. How do you
know whether your data needs to be in separate tables? Think about your
data — is it very compartmentalized? Does it go off on tangents? Consider the
following example and apply the concepts to your data and see if you need
multiple tables for your database.
The Big Organization database
A non-profit organization — one that rescues homeless pets — has a data-
base of volunteers and contacts — past, present, and potential — and wants
to keep track of a lot of information on them. For current and past volunteers,
the people running the organization want to store information about the vol-
unteering that was done, how much time they spent, what they did, and for
whom. For potential volunteers, they want to keep track of when and how
they’ve contacted them, whether with mailings and phone calls or at meet-
ings. Imagine keeping all of that in a single table — with everything from the
volunteer’s name to what causes they support to where they live and how
much time they can donate.
For a complex database like this one, you’d need multiple tables, as follows:
✓ One table would house the volunteer contact information — names,
addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. It might make sense
to add a Volunteer Number field, which would make each record unique,
and it would be equally sensible to come up with a number format
where one or more of the characters could be used to differentiate
among different volunteer/contact types — past, current, or potential.
✓ A second table would contain the volunteer number again (as a way to
link or connect the two tables) and also the volunteers’ status informa-
tion — how much time they have available to volunteer, when they’re
available, and which areas they can work in, geographically.
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