Access 2002: The Complete Reference (Book/CD-Rom) [With CD ROM]

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.

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-)

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.

This book is an excellent reference for not only Access 2002 but 2000 as well. The author does a fine job of introducing basic concepts in the early chapters and building on that knowledge toward more complex procedures. The ideal reader for this reference will probably be someone with a mid to advanced beginner understanding of Access all the way through the intermediate to advanced range. The pages are chock full of graphics (screenshots) as well as some step-by-step hands on examples. The text was clear; table of contents and index are well organized.

I felt a previous review of this book was quite unfair so I thought I would add my two cents. I think this is a good book *for* developers. It has reasonable coverage of most topics in Access and it avoids the "greatest hits" syndrome that many Complete Reference guides seem to have. If you develop Access databases and are a programmer, this makes a good reference book.