Difference b/w MS Excel and MS Access

[parulkohli]

Hey guys i have been following Chandoo since last 6 months and thanks alot for making me good in Excel.

Now I want to have the same command in MS Access also, but i have never used it.

Can someone please tell me difference between two, can we analysis data in Access with ease?


Do you guys know any good online community where i can learn Access.


Thanks Alot

 

[SirJB7]

Hi, parulkholi!


First of all welcome to Chandoo's website Excel forums. Thank you for your joining us and glad to have you here.


As a starting point I'd recommend you to read the three first green sticky topics at this forums main page. There you'll find general guidelines about how this site and community operates (introducing yourself, posting files, netiquette rules, and so on).


Among them you're prompted to perform searches within this site before posting, because maybe your question had been answered yet.


Feel free to play with different keywords so as to be led thru a wide variety of articles and posts, and if you don't find anything that solves your problem or guides you towards a solution, you'll always be welcome back here. Tell us what you've done, consider uploading a sample file as recommended, and somebody surely will read your post and help you.


And about your question...


If you haven't performed yet the search herein, try going to the topmost right zone of this page (Custom Search), type the keywords "learn access" and press Search button. You'd retrieve many links from this website, like the following one(s), maybe you find useful information and even the solution. If not please advise so as people who read it could get back to you as soon as possible.


http://chandoo.org/forums/topic/ms-access-1


Regards!

 

[bobhc]

Good day parulkohli

Microsoft developed Access to make Excel look quicker


I have used both and have had training in both Access through a professional body and Excel through this first class forum.

Both are powerful programs in what they do. Access is the one to use if you have a large, very large amount of data to input, you can setup user forms that keep people away from the data tables and restrict what can and can not be inputted, to make Access do what is needed you have to go beyond the graphical user interface and very quickly step into VBA. I personally think Excel is more user friendly and is better and data crunching, this can be done in Access but is not so friendly. And from bitter experience Access is flaky very flaky, you can make a very large spread sheet with a lot of formatting and formulas and save it and when you open it it still work as it should, this does not happen with Access you can spent a lot of time rechecking and rewriting the code (not me as I do not know VBA but the IT guy gets very frustrated with ACCESS).But it does a job

 

[SirJB7]

Hi, parulkholi!


I'd add just this, and I know that I'll get some "nice" answers


Access is a full featured database while Excel even it's powerful features is still a spreadsheet program.

It's like comparing Excel with Word: you can have tables in Word, perform calculation... but if you want to get your data structured and ready to operate with it, you should shift to Excel.

Alike if you want to keep hierarchical dependencies and integrity between data with different internal structure, you should shift to Access.


Even if Word allows me to build a 10K records table, I'd never dare to do such a thing, that's for Excel. Even Access allows me to build a 100K or 1000K rows worksheet, I'd never dare to to such a thing, even more if other worksheets/tables are related or linked to it.


If you have to do a lot of transformations with the data, and you change them frequently (the definition of the transformations), Access is a pain there, while Excel with its embedded functions makes it a smooth process.


And don't talk about charting in Access, as well as database features in Excel...


I remember what one guy (I don't know if he has enough authority or not) said:

"I highly appreciate Microsoft extending the limit from 65,536 to more than a million rows. I admit I do not need this amount of data rows in most of my models. Performing more complex calculations on a data base with one million rows usually leads to an inacceptable bad performance of the workbook. However, not being limited to the relatively small number of 65K data rows provides more flexibility in general, especially for preprocessing data." http://excellentias.com/2010/12/entrevista-con-robert-mundigl-clearly-and-simply/


Same place where this other guy (same considerations as above) said: " I think the max. rows is more of a marketing ploy than actual feature. I am yet to see a desktop or laptop that can process all the million rows without crashing." http://excellentias.com/2010/10/entrevista-con-chandoo-microsoft-excel-mvp/


Regards!