Hi Everyone,

I am faced with a situation that I have not come across before. In my
department are a number of people that are all heavy data workers.
Most of their work is done in Excel (God help me), and it eats a lot
of time. I have developed a number of 'tools' in Access to speed up
their work and after a few years they have finally cottoned on that
perhaps Excel isnt the best (or only) tool for the job.

I have been approached by some of the staff about 'learning Access'
and what Access can do. I fumbled my way through a 1 hour informal
chit chat and came to the conclusion that I have absolutely no idea
how to actually relate the abilites or advantages of Access to a
complete layman. Dont get me wrong, these are not stupid people, far
from it. They can surely wrap their minds around most topics I think,
given the chance. I just dont know how to approach this.

Does anyone have any experience in handling this or something similar?

Cheers

The Frog

"The Frog" <Mr.Frog.to.you (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote

My 2p worth:

No, but I think the most fundamental thing to impress upon potential newbies
is that Access is not a tool but a toolbox. That is to say, it does more or
less nothing out of the box ... hang on, you know all this already, but I
just think it's an important point to relate.



Keith.

The Frog wrote:

Maybe with the approach of separating the tasks. For example, you may
have an Order that requires customers and has order details. You can
separate the processes into specific forms to handle each task ( a
separate form for Order, Details, Customers that make easy modifications
for each unit but can be accessed from a combined unit, set the
defaults, control error trapping, move to sections and controls of a
form easily based upon input into a field. The ability to set
properties from a single property sheet than for a group of cells, etc.

Maybe how the changes are made to a specific task than can be shared
with many folks and it'll all work the same.

As Keith noted, you know Access and Excel. Perhaps an explanation of
how they are currently doing something and how it could be done in
Access and what benefits there are by doing it in Access.

The Frog <Mr.Frog.to.you (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote:

One thought might be to convince your boss to let you spend some in a bit of a class
room setting and one on one time with these folks.

In the classroom setting take one of their spreadsheets, import it into Access and
show them how to normalize it. That could easily take a day or two.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I will take a two pronged approach to this. First I will (try and)
come up with a simple 'not a tool but a toolbox' type explanation
leading into a 'different tools for different jobs' with some
examples, leading to 'chaining' your workflow tools together to 'get
the job done more easily'.

The second prong I think would be to have pre-made a practical example
of one of their tasks, and then to do the classroom thing and show
them how to build it. Hopefully with this they will get the idea and
many more new ones! If that doesnt do it then nothing will :-)

I will post the 'explanation' that I come up with in this thread.
Maybe someone will find it useful if they come across the same
problem. It's a little OT, but I hope not too far :-)

Cheers and thanks, I really appreciate this one

The Frog

consider some of the nice on line videos in which Microsoft easily is
selling the benefits of using access as compared to other produces....

here is a nice one for 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/training...RC102739891033


--
Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
pleaseNOOSpamKallal (AT) msn (DOT) com