Tutorial Blog 3/Importing and Exporting Data In Access

With today being the information age a lot of times I think we find ourselves overloaded with information while running out of room to store and manage it.  Well, microsoft access is a powerful database tool that will allow you to store and manage your data as you see fit.

Many people have heard of access but have never attempted to learn it's full capabilities.  One thing most people do not know is that you can import and export data into and out of microsoft access.  This is very useful when you realize that you have a very large excel or text file that would be easier to manage as a database.  Within the next couple of paragraphs I hope to show you how to properly import and export data in access.

First, you need to open microsoft access and open a blank database.  After opening a blank database you then will need to go to external data on the ribbon which will display two boxes; one with options for importing and one for exporting.  You should see something similar to the image below.

We'll start with importing data.  As you can see from above you have several options to choose from when importing data such as excel, sharepoing, text files and xml files.  We'll keep it simple for demonstration purposes and choose to import an excel file.  After clicking on the excel icon in the Import window you'll have a dialog box appear where you can browse your hard drive for the correct excel file to import as well as choose whether you want access to create a new table for the data or just append it to a table currently in your database.  Access will then give you the option to choose which worksheets you would like to include from the excel file.  After selecting your range you will then click next.  If your first row includes column headings be sure to check the check box on the next page so they will be recognized as field titles.  After that you will be given the option to select the data type necessary for each field as well as choosing a primary access key.  After all of this you're ready to name your file and finish the import.  After finishing the import it should open your new table in datasheet view with all the data from the excel file.  You're new table may look something like this.

So since you now know how to import data into access let's quickly go over exporting as it is very similar but much easier.  Let's export an access table to excel.  As you probably guessed you will simply click on the excel button in the Export pane.  You will then select the file type you want the table to be saved as, as well as selecting the file name.  After making the appropriate selections you will click ok and you will see a message that tells you your table was successfully exported. 

I hope that this was helpful in explaining how to import and export data in microsoft access.  It would be best for you to try it out yourself and play with the different file types.  There are several more options when importing a text file but mostly it is self explanatory.  Hopefully, by practicing you'll be comfortable with microsoft access in no time! 

Database Project

I've learned to work a database!  I just completed a project using the powerful and popular microsoft office database tool access.  My assignment included importing a delimited text file that included about a thousand entries with a local gym's customer information.  After importing the raw data I was then asked to perform a query that would show only individual memberships rather than family memberships and only those that have left the gym within the last 6 months.  I found this task to be the most challenging throughout the project, especially trying to only display the customers that had terminated their membership within the last 6 months.  I did a search and found an expression that worked and displayed only the requested memberships.  The expression was >Date()-180.  This expression took today's date, March 27th, and subtracted 180 days or 6 months.  By putting a greater than sign in front of the expression it only displays dates greater than 6 months ago.  After doing the query I also did a form to enter in new customer's info as well as do a report based on the aformentioned query.  I learned a lot of features that are available to users through microsoft access but I'm sure I've only began to scratch the surface to the sofware's database capabilities.

I think there would be several ways to take better advantage of the database used in this assignment.  I think it would be a good idea to do a query on just family memberships and compare the difference between how many family customers you've lost to how many individual members you've lost.  This will help to tell you what marketing strategies would be best suited to retain more of your customers.  I think it would also be helpful to do a report on what the average length of a gym membership is for a family and individual.  In my opinion, these would be vital statistics when forecasting sales for your business as well as marketing to retain current customers. 

Overall, I thought this was a great and challenging project.  I enjoyed learning some of the more important features of access and am looking forward to taking advantage of the power of databases in the near future!

Presentation Project

I have now successfully completed a powerpoint presentation and shared it with the world on YouTube.  The link for my presentation is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXqw-WjLGm4.  I have reviewed my presentation with the provided critique rubric as well as reviewed one of my peer's presentations on the appropriate discussion board.  In accordance with the rubric I feel as though my presentation was very well organized as far the layout of the slides.  I tried to make it flow very easily and keep everything in sequence. 

I also attempted to think of any questions ahead of time so I could answer them during the presentation instead of leaving my listeners wondering about my idea.  I think I did a good job at covering all the necessary details but not giving away too much information.  I also grabbed the listener's attention on the second slide by telling a shorty story about a long essay assignment due in two days.  I then went on to explain that our new site would be the place to go to see prior student's samples as well as conducting and saving your research.

I thought I gave an in depth review of what my website idea entails including the layout of the site, the market potential, the customers or students, as well as the overall plan for starting the business.  I didn't want to present too much information so I tried to leave out boring statistics as much as I could and focus on the essentials of the site.

I have learned a lot from this project.  I found the project to be fun and interesting.  I know on probably more than one occasion during my professional career I will have to give a presentation so I think this was a great way to start getting myself prepared.  The hardest part of the project for me was trying to convert the powerpoint presentation to a video so it could be uploaded to YouTube.  I tried several different avenues and finally got it converted but then my audio didn't exactly match my slides.  I tried redoing it several times but kept running into the exact same issue.  So I decided to settle with what I had but overall I think it was a very successful presentation