Sections

    Access Explained
    Tables
    Queries
    Forms
    Reports
    Modules (VBa)

Tables are fundamental to your Access Database; all the data contain within your database will be stored in one or more tables.

A table consists of a number of rows and columns, the rows are known as records. Each record in a table corresponds to an entity i.e. in a customer database each record (row) in the customer table would hold information about a customer.

The columns, known as fields, store the data about the given entity in the record. i.e. in a database keeping track of personnel, the personnel table may contain fields such as First Name, Surname, DOB etc...

The two main difference between an Access Database table and an Excel spreadsheet are that fields within the table are of a fixed type i.e. a persons date of birth would be a field of type 'date' and the field will only accept a date entry; Restricting field data types gives Access a lot more control of what users input into the database, reducing typing errors and making calculations more robust. Also unlike in Excel, fields should not contain values that can be calculated from other data i.e. if your table contains a person’s date of birth then there is no need to store their age in the table as this can be calculated later in a query or report.