Access Expert Level 10

This class picks up where Expert Level 9 left off. We will start by reviewing my solution to the homework assignment you were given in the last class. You were to move the name, address, and company logo of our fictitious company to the System Defaults table we created in Expert 9. This way you can display that information anywhere in the database without having to copy and paste it a million times if it changes. We'll also learn about Nested IIF Functions.

Next, you will learn about one of the most powerful functions in Access: DLOOKUP. You can use DLOOKUP to pull information directly out of a table or query without having to have a form open. We'll create a special form just for our System Defaults (instead of having them always sitting on the Main Menu) and then use DLOOKUP to read that data for our company name, address, and logo on our forms and reports.

We'll spend lots of time learning about DLOOKUP. In the previous example, we were just dealing with a table that only has one record: the System Defaults. However, DLOOKUP's true potential comes when you learn how to send it criteria to pick data from a specific record. We'll learn how to work with numeric (ID) criteria, text string criteria, and even date criteria. You'll learn about the troublesome "double-double quotes" which can make your life miserable if you don't get them right. We will use this technique to look up the phone number for an order's sales rep so that you can quickly display it on the order form and invoice.

We'll discuss how we can have multiple fields that are related to a value in another table, but have different names. For example, we'll have a SalesRepID and a ServiceTechID in the Customer's table (a sales rep and a service tech) but both will be related to the EmployeeT. You'll see how the relationships for this work.

Finally, we'll learn about Calculated Table Fields. These are similar to the Calculated Query Fields we worked with in previous lessons, however the results are stored directly in the table. You generally want to avoid using them, but there is an exception - and we'll talk about that in this lesson.

This is the tenth class in the Access Expert series. There's a lot of great material in this class. Learning DLOOKUP alone will make your databases much more powerful. Of course, if you have any questions about whether or not this class is for you, please contact me.
 

Complete Outline - Access Expert Level 10