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Summary: Great self-study for beginners and for in-class exercises
Review: I use this book to teach Microsoft Access 97 to beginners and it works very well. Its step-by-step nature helps students work exercises right in class. The book is divided up into four parts, with a review at the end of each part that works great for an open-book quiz to test students' proficiency. There are CamCorder files available for download from the web to help demonstrate some features of Access. Although there are some typographical errors in the text, corrections can be found at the Microsoft Press web site. This book is not for the advanced Access user, but provides a good learning tool to cover most of the basics. A minor problem is that some seldom-used features, such as the toggle button are discussed, instead of spending more time on the more-often-used features. Students like the fact that it can be used as a beginner's reference to brush up on skills after completing the book. I do recommend to students a more detailed reference book, such as Running Microsoft Access 97, to supplement their future reference needs.
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Summary: Great introductory book
Review: I'm a bid surprised by some of the negative reviews on thisbook. They were either written by already expert coders of VisualBasic expecting advanced materials in an introductory book or by folks that roll out of their bed on the wrong side each day. I suspect the latter.This is not a book for learning how to create databases. This is not a book on learning how to write Access macros. This is not a book that you simply read to become a master. This book gives you a foundation for event programming. If you are a programmer from another environment that has not experienced property sheets and methods and event programming or if you are new to programming and have the desire to learn how to program in an event driven environment with Access then this is a great introductory book for both Access and programming. In order to learn from this book you should work through each lesson at the keyboard. The gains you will achieve as you make data entry mistakes and correct them, and by pressing the F1 help key to read some more on the topics being covered in this book, will be enormous. If you aren't willing to actually perform the exercises at the keyboard but want to be "book-learned" then you'd be better off selecting another book. We all start out as beginners with a new topic and with practice become experts. May you soon on the "expert" side.
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Summary: One fry short of a Happy Meal
Review: If you have nothing to do one afternoon buy a copy of this book and go through it's click here, type this, exercises and then try to apply it to your needs. My question to the author(s) at Catapult who wrote this book is "Why?" Why do I always want to choose the defaults? What if my problem isn't the default? What do I do then? Why not explain what would happen if I didn't choose the Default? Give me more meat and less potatoes in your explainations. We do not live in a "default" world, and it is not neccessarly easier to accept the default, HELL-O!
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Summary: introduction to access 97
Review: introduction to access 9
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Summary: but I use a Mac
Review: Not everyone uses Windows 95, 98, NT or otherwise! What resource is available for Mac users? I enrolled in four classes at my local community college and will be forced to withdraw from every one because the texts and accompanying software are written only for windows! I grow very weary of the supriority complex of PC users. The single greatest improvement in PC technology in the past five years has been to make them look and function like MACINTOSH! Those of us who were there first shouldn't be discriminated against! (Can you tell I'm pretty cheesed off about this!) I'm no dunce. I've been doing some pretty sophisticated computer work for the last 7 years and I am deeply offended by the growing Mac exclusion.
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Summary: greate book
Review: please if you receive this message, I have this book Microsoft Access but my Practice File Disk is not working I really would like it if you can help me. I really need this disk because I need to get my accounts together. And I need help, so please can you tell me if I can downloand this practice disk from the internet please. Thank you.
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Summary: Good beginner's book
Review: Pretty decent resource to get people to know Acces
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Summary: Great self-study! Chocolate cravers beware...
Review: Step by Step Microsoft Access 97 is an excellent tutorial book for learning Microsoft Access 97. The book provides a comprehensive tutorial with "Sweet Lil's Chocolater" (hint: you might want to get a bag of Hershey kisses to treat any subsequent chocolate cravings). The tutorial disk creates a link to on-line movie clips that step the user through some of the more difficult procedures such as creating a macro. The screen shots in the book facilitated "just-in'time" learning.
I discovered a couple of errors (a broken View Order Macro and missing Credit Letter.doc, as examples). The lesson summary for Section 2 needed more structure for this learner. Given the noted minor flaws, there was nothing that interfered with the learning process. This easy-to-read book would be helpful both as self-study and as a resource
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Summary: Excellent Quick Start for first time users
Review: Step-by-Step gave an excellent overview of the capabilities and features of ACCESS97 and the tutorial and examples disk were very useful. Would have liked it better if it included more appendices on the functions available and more on macros. Overall, a great start.
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Summary: Not well organized.
Review: The previous versions of this book (MS Access 2 and MS Access 95 Step-By-Step) were EXCELLENT. This version is not well-organized. Topics are scattered about the book. This book superficially introduces complex topics, such as macros in an introductory-level book. It is confusing to the student. I have used this and the previous versions for teaching courses over the past 4 years. I beg the authors/publishers to please go back to the same organization and content style as the previous versions.
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