I never really had much interest in Access growing up. I had learned about and used Microsoft Office apps in school, mainly PowerPoint (the most recent version of Office at the time was 2007). I grew up using Word and Excel, but I found it was cumbersome to manually type in the same data all the time, plus it wasn't the most efficient way to store data. After high school, I began dabbling in other database solutions, like LibreOffice Base.

I eventually started using Microsoft Access and it is my favorite tool to use for data entry. It's affordable, simple to use and I can normalize/relate tables and use primary keys to keep data clean, organized and relational.

I began watching Richard's Access Tech Help videos on YouTube in 2023, and became a member in 2024, working my way through the Beginner, and currently the Expert series. I was scouring through different Access tutorials online and found Computer Learning Zone to be the best at teaching Access from the ground up.