Access Wizards Make Databases Easy

Throughout this book, you will use Access's wizards. What's a wizard? It's a mini program that "interviews" you, asking you questions about what you want to accomplish. Then it takes your answers and creates the table, report, query, or whatever, according to your specifications. See a sample wizard screen in Figure 1.4.

Each time you create a new object, such as a table or a form, you have the choice of creating it "from scratch" in a Design view, or with a wizard to help you along. I recommend that all beginners use wizards as much as possible; I use them because they're so convenient. Leave the tough stuff, the Design view creations, to those with lots of leisure time.

In this lesson, you learned some basic facts about databases and Access. In the next lesson, you will learn some strategies for planning your database. Don't skip Lesson 2! Ten minutes worth of planning now can save you hours of backtracking later.