Hello and welcome to our course on Access 2013; the latest version of Microsoft’s
award winning database software. My name is Toby and I’m your instructor on this course.
In this first section I’d like to first of all talk about who this course is aimed
at. Now I’d like to think that anybody who is
going to be using Access 2013 would get a lot out of this course but I’m specifically
looking at three types of user; first of all users who are completely new to Access. In
fact users who may well be completely new to databases and database technology. I will
be assuming that you’ve got a good grasp of the use of Windows based software so I
won’t be talking about things like how to use the mouse or how to use the scroll buttons
or anything like that. But I won’t be making assumptions about any knowledge of databases.
So that’s really my first group, the complete beginner, somebody who wants to start developing
databases from scratch using Access 2013. The second group of users are the users who’ve
used much older versions of Microsoft Access, say, Access 2000 or Access 2003. For them
the changes in the recent version, such as the introduction of the Ribbon Interface,
are really quite major changes and if your experience of Access is with one of the older
versions, then there’ll be a lot to learn both in terms of the Ribbon and those other
kinds of change but also the major changes in Access 2013 itself. Now I do appreciate
that anybody who’s used Access before may well have a reasonably strong knowledge of
databases and database technology, but I will try to indicate as we go along any sections
that I think you may only need to look at briefly or maybe even skip over. Although
I should warn you that in some cases some of the underlying database concepts and tools
have changed as well, so you’ve got to be a little bit careful that you don’t skip
over something that has changed in recent times.
The third group are those who have used a recent version of Access, such as Access 2010.
For you the changes in Access 2013 are really quite major. You certainly have the advantage
of having seen the Ribbon Interface before, although there are one or two very significant
changes there. But the introduction in particular of web apps is really going to be a major
change for you in Access 2013. So perhaps more than any other component of Microsoft
Office experienced users of Access are really in for a bit of a surprise in this latest
version. Now the next thing I’d like to just briefly
talk about is coverage and content. Access is a very big product now. There is a lot
to learn. But I’m going to try to make the course cover as broad a range of Access as
possible without sacrificing depth. So wherever possible, we’re going to go into quite a
bit of detail as well. Now with such a big product this is actually quite difficult to
do. Now throughout the course, I am going to set you some examples and exercises to
do and I suggest that if you possibly can make the time you try to do as many of those
as possible because with so much to learn it really is important that you practice as
we go along. Having said that I’m going to cover a lot of Access and I am basically
going to omit programming. So this course does not specifically cover VBA, although
I will point out in various places the significance of VBA, programming, coding, and where it
would help you; the sort of things you could do. And then if you choose subsequently to
learn VBA, hopefully you’ll have a good idea of how it fits into the use of Access
2013. However I should point out to you one important thing and this is one of the areas
of Microsoft Office that is actually quite confusing and that is that in Access VBA and
macros are different things; they’re actually different languages, if you like. We will
be looking a little at macros. One of the major new features of Office 2013
in general and Access 2013 in particular is the use of touch. Once again, I’m going
to draw distinction on this course. I’m going to assume that whichever touch device
you’re going to use whether it’s a PC with touch or a tablet that basically you
know how to use those touch gestures. Now if you’ve got some areas of uncertainty,
don’t forget that on Microsoft.com there are various pages that explain how to use
touch with Windows, such as this one, and as we’ll see in a little while from Office.com
you can also access help on using touch gestures. I’m recording this course on a PC which
includes touch. In fact, this PC not only has mouse and keyboard but it has touch gestures
and it has hand gestures in front of the screen as well. Now I’m not going to use hand gestures
in front of the screen because it would be a bit ridiculous because you can’t actually
see what I’m doing as I’m sitting here. But I am going to use touch from time to time.
Now one of the dangers of including touch in a course like this is that we finish up
doing everything twice, which is certainly not what’s going to happen. So throughout
my preference on this course is going to be to use the interface that is still the most
commonly used one for Access development and that is mouse and keyboard. And what I’m
going to try to do is that whenever something new is introduced, whether it’s a specific
touch gesture needed or perhaps touch involves a slightly different approach, then I will
make a point of explaining that. In terms of the most straightforward touch gestures,
things like tap on the screen as equivalent to click, press and hold as the equivalent
to right click, these are explained on Microsoft.com and Office.com in various places. But again,
I will try to highlight them in the course from time to time.
Now for many of you, you probably already got Access 2013 installed, possibly as part
of Office 2013. But just in case, I should highlight to you a couple of sources of information
that are very important. One of them relates to the system requirements for Office 2013.
What are the requirements to be able to run Office 2013? Well, you have hardware requirements
and software requirements and within Microsoft.com in the TechNet section, if you do a search
on Microsoft.com, you can find this; there is a page with system requirements for Office
2013. Now whenever I refer you to any internet pages, either Microsoft’s or anybody else’s,
bear in mind that they may have changed since I recorded this course. So it may look a little
bit different. The information may even be a little bit different. So this is as I record,
this course which is towards the end of January 2013, Office 2013 has just been released for
general sale so this is accurate information as of the end of January. So if we scroll
down the system requirements, a couple of things to highlight. The hardware requirements
are here; gigahertz processor, amount of ram, amount of hard disk space, and so on. Very
importantly, particularly if you’re planning to use Access on a PC, are the Windows operating
system requirements. Windows 7 and Windows 8 are the two supported operating systems.
Windows XP and Windows Vista are not supported. So if you’re planning to use Office 2013,
you need to upgrade from XP or Vista to either Windows 7 or Windows 8. You can also run Office
2013 on the two most recent server products as well. Further down this document there
are specific requirements related to Access and actually they’re not particularly onerous
requirements because they basically say that Access 2013 internet functionality requires
an internet connection. Now one thing you’re really going to struggle with Access 2013
is if you don’t have a live internet connection. Now you can certainly use Access 2013 in desktop
mode if you like, I’ll explain what that means later, without an internet connection,
but things like Help completely depend on it really and also the ability to create and
use web apps, to save to SkyDrive, to share work, many other aspects do depend on an internet
connection. So if you don’t have a live internet connection certain things are either
going to be a little bit difficult or in some cases impossible.
Again, I appreciate that many of you watching this video already have Access 2013 installed,
but let me just have a quick look at the options as they are today for getting Access 2013
from Microsoft. Bear in mind again that they may well have changed by the time you watch
this. The subscription version of Office 2013; there are various options. The Home Premium
seems to be the one that’s the most popular that includes Access and you can get a free
month. There is a link from Office.Microsoft.com at the moment to get a copy of that. You get
it on five PCs for a monthly subscription and you can get a one month free trial. A
month hopefully would be enough time to work your way through this course. You can also
get a trial of Business version. Of course, choosing a version will depend not only on
your requirements in terms of the components but whether you want a subscription based
version or whether you want to buy a version outright. But subject to licensing conditions
such as the fact that you can’t use a Home Premium version for business use, you need
to choose a version that’s suitable for your requirements.
So with further apologies to those of you who already have Access 2013 installed, there
are various sources available particularly in Microsoft.com, particularly in TechNet
within Microsoft.com for how to install Office 2013. There’s absolutely no point in me
going through an installation because it’s all very well covered online. So once you’ve
got your copy of Office 2013, for example, there are some great instructions that you
can follow and those instructions if you for example use this set which I think are particularly
good and you can find this set just by searching on all or part of that title on Google or
within Microsoft.com, then there are also discussions at the end of the article about
any problems that people have found, any particular things that people needed to do to make Office
2013 in general or Access 2013 in particular work. So whether you’ve already got Access
2013 installed or whether you’re just thinking about it and maybe just about to go out to
your computer store to buy it, from this point onwards I’m going to assume that you have
Access 2013 installed. I’m also going to assume that you can start
Access 2013. I’m running this course on Windows 8. So I can start Access 2013 from
the start screen. I’ve also pinned Access 2013 to the taskbar and in fact for much of
the course I’m going to be working in desktop mode on Windows 8 anyway. And of course I’ve
got a desktop shortcut as well as having it pinned to the taskbar. If you’re using Windows
7, then I’ll assume that you can start Access 2013 either from the start menu. You may have
pinned it to the start menu. You may have created a desktop shortcut, etc. But whichever
method you’re using, you are able to start Access 2013 and the first time you start it
up it should look a little bit like the following. So this is the Access 2013 start screen. Yours
should look very similar to this the first time that you run it. You will have different
user information on the top right and the content of this information we’re going
to talk about in quite a bit of detail later on. But basically this is how Access 2013
looks. This is called the start screen. One other thing to be aware of is that I’m
recording this on a screen with quite a low resolution really and it’s also a 4:3 aspect
ratio. So it’s on a fairly square screen. If you’re using widescreen and particularly
if you’ve got a widescreen with a high resolution, you may see a lot more on the screen. So for
instance, these sort of tiles here they’re actually links to Access templates. There
may be many more of these on the screen that you can see. Don’t worry too much about
that. It just depends on the resolution of your screen. The way that everything functions
is the same; it’s just that sometimes you can squeeze more on to your screen than I
can. Oh and just one other thing to mention, with
the course you get access to some sample files and you should know where you’ve got those
sample files. Hopefully you’ve got them stored on your PC, laptop, other device somewhere
where you can easily find them. The list will be a bit like this. The actual number and
the names of the files may vary a little but it’ll fundamentally look a bit like this.
These are the sample files that I’m going to use throughout the course. I’m hoping
that you’re going to do all of the exercises that I set. It’ll take you a little bit
of time, but I think you’ll find that the value and the reward that you’ll get from
doing those exercise will make it well worth that time. Make sure you know where they are.
So that’s the end of this introduction. The next thing I’d like to do is to talk
about what’s new in Access 2013. Now if you haven’t used Access before, you may
think that talking about what’s new won’t mean a lot to you, but I think you’ll find
that it does and it’s quite a short section and I’ll see you in that section next.