Hello,

I currently have an excel spreadsheet of employees that are on probation, which advises us dates of when to send out periodic reports to their supervisors.

My Access skills are fairly basic, I've created my tables, but stumped on where to go next.
If anyone can help me or steer me in the right direction with ideas would really appreciate it.

Sorry if my request is vague, it might be easier to understand my aim if you saw the spreadsheet.

Thanks in advance

Hi

Welcome to UA (IMG:http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

You're right - your question is a bit vague (IMG:http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

What are you wanting to do with Access that you're not currently doing with Excel?

I guess the first thing with whatever you want to do is to get your data into Access. To do that, look in the help files for the TransferSpreadSheet method of the Docmd object. Once you've got your data into Access in a normalised format, then you can query/report/amend/enter the data pretty much however you want.

Bear in mind though that Excel and Access are totally different applications and deal with data in very different (although to some extent interchangeable) ways

If you could explain a bit more what your goals are it would be easier to help (IMG:http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

The key to success will be in the table design.

In excel, you layout the data the way you want it to print. This is usually in a format that is not properly normalized for the way tables will be structures in Access. In Aces that table design does not really represent the way your data will print. Query will be used to reformat the data from the tables into a foramt that looks a lot more like excel data.

Here is so reading to help you get started:

• Database planning tutorial Part I
  
• Database planning tutorial Part II
  
• argeedblu's FAQ on Design Strategies
  
• Noah's FAQ on Normalization
  
• Jerry's FAQ on Normalization
  
• GroverParkGeorge's PDF on Normalization
  
• Jerry’s FAQ on Fully Qualified Naming
  
• Jerry's FAQ on Glossary
  
• Danny's FAQ on Reserved Words
  
• Autonumbers - What They Are / Are Not
  
• Primary Keys - Natural vs Surrogate
  
• Naming Conventions - Hungarian Notation
  
• Crystal's ACCESS Basics for Programming
  
• Database Answers (free models)
  
• MSKB 283878: Description of the database normalization basics