Rating: 
Summary: If you're just learning, this book is the one for you!
Review: I just started using Access and I was suffering my way through a huge book on Access and not getting anywhere. Then I purchased SAMs Teach Yourself Microsoft Access in 21 Days and I felt like I had the world in my hands. This book is fabulous and it's so well written that you can actually cover three days in the book in one day. It starts out giving you excellent examples of what Access can do and then breaking down the steps. It shows you the logic behind good table technique and gives you great examples of logical thinking and heads-up development. I'm very happy with this book and thankful that I found it. Toni
Rating: 
Summary: Very dispointed with this book
Review: I usually buy the "Sams 21 days" books and am very satisfied with the overall content that they deliver. Usually...This book on Access 2000 is not a good book. It skims on everything and nothing, the examples are not interesting and you don't learn from it. Unless you are really clueless on Access and want to have a very very general picture without knowing why it works, don't buy that book. I will now stop buying Sams' book with my eyes closed. The fact that I had to buy another book (Alison Balter's, great book) angries me even more than the mere fact that I spent 25$ on the Sams' book.
Rating:
Summary: Very dispointed with this book
Review: I usually buy the "Sams 21 days" books and am very satisfied with the overall content that they deliver. Usually... This book on Access 2000 is not a good book. It skims on everything and nothing, the examples are not interesting and you don't learn from it. Unless you are really clueless on Access and want to have a very very general picture without knowing why it works, don't buy that book. I will now stop buying Sams' book with my eyes closed. The fact that I had to buy another book (Alison Balter's, great book) angries me even more than the mere fact that I spent 25$ on the Sams' book.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent choice to cut your teeth on...
Review: I was a little shocked to see the average review for this was a 2... I am an aspiring database designer. One has to start somewhere, so I set off to learn Access. I had already tried the O'Reilly books (too much) and the Dummies books (too little). I found the Sam's book to be a good middle ground for someone who knows a little about computers, but mostly knows that they need to learn a lot more. The Sam's gives a good general overview about Access queries, forms and reports. It walks you through the program in a logical order, in a realistic length of time. It has a good introduction to Access SQL and VBA. It remains one of my primary resources for Access. If there is a failing to the Sam's Access, it's that it needs more real world examples (it has some, but it could use more). For that, buy the O'Reilly Access Cookbook.
Rating: 
Summary: I want money back..
Review: I would recommend buying this book if you want to learn what
Access can do and how to use the tool. I did not buy this book
with the intent to learn database concepts. All I wanted was an
introduction to the tool and it's capablities.
I feel that the book met my objective. Lets face it, you will not become an experienced
MS Access Database programmer in 21 days. To become fully
proficient with this tool, or another DBM, you must have
some knowledge and experience with SQL and other database
concepts such as normalization. Microsoft also includes
VBA with Access, so you will also want to gain experience with
that. You will also need to learn about ADO.
The author does cover all of the topics above, but the
examples often lack a lot of detail and explaination.
Just remember that each one of the topics could be the subject
of another book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good introduction to Access
Review: I would recommend buying this book if you want to learn what
Access can do and how to use the tool. I did not buy this book
with the intent to learn database concepts. All I wanted was an
introduction to the tool and it's capablities.
I feel that the book met my objective. Lets face it, you will not become an experienced
MS Access Database programmer in 21 days. To become fully
proficient with this tool, or another DBM, you must have
some knowledge and experience with SQL and other database
concepts such as normalization. Microsoft also includes
VBA with Access, so you will also want to gain experience with
that. You will also need to learn about ADO.
The author does cover all of the topics above, but the
examples often lack a lot of detail and explaination.
Just remember that each one of the topics could be the subject
of another book.
Rating: 
Summary: Sams "Obstruct Yourself" from Microsoft Access in 21 Days
Review: It is not your desire to learn which takes you through the book, but sheer determination ! The book lacks a steady learning curve. It delivers the information in pieces which can be difficult to place in context. Which made me feel like reading a traditional text book, but without a lecturer and fellow students to support me. There are several errors in the book. It is obviously based on the Beta version of Access 2000, which makes it more troublesome to locate the needed buttons and commands. The samples from the CD will not install automatically, you will have to copy them one by one and change the properties by removing the Read-Only attribute. The code you are asked to write, to gain hands-on experience, is filled with syntax errors. Therefore your examples will not work, which makes it very difficult to proceed to the next task. After I have read the book, and in the process worked my way around the errors, I feel I have a very good picture of what Access 2000 is capable of, and in what direction I should go to accomplish my programming goals. If you are new to Access 2000, and want to program a database (Private/Semi-professional level) your will be able to learn how from the book. The book includes lots of information, but makes it difficult and tiresome to learn Access in 21 days. If only the publisher had a supporting website to list errors, it could have done so much better.
Rating:
Summary: Very disorganized book
Review: The examples are HUGE - I have always thought that some straight simple examples would be nice. The very first DB you make really has to be taken off of the CD since it has 8 tables. The book does not really improve after that since the info is very scattered. For instance the FORMS chapters are 5, 10, 14. In between is a ton of other stuff. All of the form examples are HUGE also. I imagine this book will be a nice reference book once I know what I am doing with Access. However with the long examples I found myself short on time to complete them. In this books case, teach yourself in 21 days really means 21 solid 24 hour lessons.
Rating:
Summary: Riddled With Errors And Poor Editing
Review: The files on the CD had the read-only attribute set. No big deal; just set the read/write property once it's on your hard drive. However, this indicates the overall problem with this book: very poor editing. It's as if nobody sat down with this book and worked through the examples before the book went to publishing. Here's why. 1. The aforementioned read-only file problem. Poor editing. Somebody should've caught this. 2. He tells you to save your work with filenames already assigned to other files. If you save your work using his instructions, you write over the solutions to the problems. Not a big deal: just recopy them from the CD. But again, this indicates poor editing. Somebody should've caught this. 3. He gives instructions to perform actions, like generating a report. But the accompanying text is completely different from what you see on the screen. In other words, he has you do something, but from reading the text, what you're supposed to see on the screen, and what you actually see on the screen is completely different. Most of the time, I was able to get by. But there were places (like the Reports chapter) that the discrepancy was so large, that it was impossible to follow along with the text. I had to read through the chapter without following the instructions on the computer. I have a suspicion that the authors changed parts some of the "follow along" instructions without changing the text that discussed the examples later on. 4. The authors are very fond of using the phrase "And we'll learn about X in the next section". However, it often happens that X was learned in the previous section. It's almost as if they restructured the chapters without making the changes to references where a topic will be learned. Not a big deal. It doesn't hurt your learning. It just indicates poor editing. The list goes on and on. I took a brief look at the SAMS Access 2003, which has the same lead author, and the reviews weren't good. Here's the scoop. The book isn't awful. It has some good qualities. I like the guy's writing style. However, there are SO many books on Access in the market... there are SO many different books to choose from... there is absolutely NO reason to have to settle on a book with such lousy editing. If there were only one or two competing Access books, I'd even give this one a recommendation. The fact is, there are hundreds of books on the subject, and despite the fact that this book does have some good qualities, there's no reason to have to settle for such shoddy editing.
Rating:
Summary: Missing Important Chapters
Review: The publisher choose to remove the chapters first introducted in the Access 97 in 21 Days on the fundamentals of database design. This was a BIG mistake. The most persistant problem beginners, the target group, have is correctly designing tables. I did not recommend the teach yourself Access books before the Access 97 in 21 days and it looks like I will not be recommending the most recent addition for Access 2000.
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