Access 2002: The Complete Reference (Book/CD-ROM)

Author: Virginia Andersen, Megg Morin
List Price: $49.99
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ISBN: 0072132418
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (19 April, 2001)
Sales Rank: 24,381
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5
Good entry level book
This book is a very good reference manual.
It has detailed information on every major aspect of Access.

The VBA programming and the queries are treated fairly lightly, so if you plan on doing advanced queries or use SQL a lot, you should augment your purchase with another book. The same applies for VBA programming.

I found that there are sometimes too many repetitions of very basic UI operations, which make the book unnecessarily big.

Overall, it is a good book to get started, then you should acquire specific books in areas you need further information. It is not a "complete" reference, as the title suggests.

Rating: 5 out of 5
An Excellent Reference
I needed a reference for work, one that was easy enough for a my co-worker, a non-programmer, to use and yet detailed enough to be useful for me. I browsed through most of the current versions of Access references, checking the details, coverage and examples for something that might meet my requirements. While it is impossible for any book to be everything to everyone, this one comes very close to meeting my needs with regard to Access.

Note, this is not a manual for learning SQL, or VBA. Both essential if you want to really step beyond the basic elements of Access usage. However, this book addresses the essential usage elements of working with Access - tables, queries, forms and reports - as well as several less 'basic' elements like security, environment customization, and multi-user environments. The material is extensive, the examples are well explained, and the topics are well organized. If I were to teach a class on Access, I'd use this as the text.

I have not been disappointed with this book. P-)

Rating: 5 out of 5
Response to unfair criticism
The person who gave this book a poor rating obviously didn't read it, or doesn't know how to read. This is an excellent book, very thorough in its coverage, and well-organized. It even has a reference guide on the cd that comes with it, which is much easier than the book to take with you on the go. I have tried learing Access using another book that covers all the programs that come with Office XP, but it was frustrating in its meager coverage of important points. The ONLY improvement that could be made to this book is a more detailed chapter on creating relationships and a more thorough discussion of designing databases. However, in its practical discussion of creating the database and searching through it, it is superb.



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