Microsoft Access 2007 Review

GCN recently published a review of Microsoft Access 2007, by Carlos A. Soto, that I thought was very helpful. His summary was that Access 2007 provides great versatility and compatibility with other Microsoft suites, but can be difficult to master. With robust and intuitive database templates, Access 2007 has become very accessible (outside of complex schemas or advanced features). Microsoft has answered the criticism on it’s lack of templates by providing access to dozens, ranging from an asset database to track resources to templates for faculty, students, and marketing-related project resource tracking. While the templates are ready to use as-is, they can also be modified and re-created as needed. Access 2007, like the rest of the Microsoft Office 2007 Suite, utilizes the ribbon interface, and like Excel, you can enter data into an Access cell before formatting, add columns to tables and edit them without using Design view. In addition, a new feature called Automatic Data Type Detection, makes it easy to create schemas and tables. You can now paste Excel spreadsheets into an Access table, run pivot tables and chart views, and basically eliminate the need to export data to Excel. Carlos goes on to list a handful of other new features found in Access 2007, and concludes that, “Access was by far the easiest and most robust database in the review for uploading, expanding and analyzing my test data.” Subscribe to the Keystone OnDemand blog to be the first to learn about future Microsoft Access 2010 Training and Access 2007 training, news and special subscriber offers.