Microsoft Access 2002 Upgrade [OLD VERSION]

Intended for use on the corporate intranet or over the Internet, Access 2002 is the latest version of Microsoft's popular database application. Designed to integrate with a variety of sources and viewers (including Web browsers), Access users can convert forms and reports into Web pages, and edit these Data Access Pages from within their browsers. Access 2002 now includes support for XML, the Extensible Markup Language standard, allowing users to export their databases to an XML document that can be viewed in any browser with HTML 4.0 support. XML support runs both ways: XML documents can also be imported into a Jet or SQL Server database.

With this new version, Access users can link Data Access Pages or other database files to SQL Server services without the need to perform any programming. In fact, many projects in Access can be handled with minimal or no coding required. A variety of helpful wizards walk you through the steps of creating different types of project databases.

Although it uses a new format for its database files, Access 2002 can open and edit Access 2000 files without converting them to the new format. Access 2002 also allows new databases to be saved in earlier Access formats, making them easier to share with users of earlier versions of Access. When converting older Access files to 2002, Access keeps track of any problems in an error log, making it easier to solve problems as they occur.

New features on the design side include expanded undo and redo functions, which let users move back and forth through more changes when creating reports, forms, and Data Access Pages. There are also a variety of new keyboard shortcuts, including ones that allow users to move easily from one view to another. Access 2002 also includes speech support for dictation and menu navigation via voice commands (with surprisingly high accuracy).

Database tables and charts can now be expressed using PivotChart and PivotTable, two new dynamic and interactive views, just by dragging fields to the appropriate area within Access or selecting the option from the View menu. PivotChart and PivotTable expressions can also be saved as Data Access Pages for viewing via the Web. Tables and charts can also be converted to an Excel spreadsheet format simply by dragging the information to Excel.

Microsoft Access 2002 isn't a leaps-and-bounds improvement over Access 2000. But the bevy of new features--including XML support, PivotChart and PivotTable views, and Data Access Page creation--make it an appealing upgrade for the database designer. --J. Curtis

Microsoft Access 2002 provides the tools to build solutions that integrate and leverage Internet standards to better allow for the sharing and presentation of data across the Internet and intranet. Access 2002 lets you integrate data sources across the enterprise. In an integrated application environment, business applications communicate seamlessly with one another. One of the key goals of Access 2002 is to provide an integrated application environment, which enables users to perform query and analysis of enterprise data sources from the familiar, easy-to-use Office interface. The new technologies and features of Access 2002 help businesses be more agile by enabling users to unlock the power of the organization's data. Using Access 2002, corporations can build data-driven business solutions quickly and deploy those applications into the environment that their end-users are using every day.

Access 2002 features conditional formatting, which provides support for negative and positive numbers, and values that can be expressed as less than, greater than, between, or equal to. In addition, users will be able to format based on user-defined functions. Based on the value, the user can set font, styles, banners, and colors. Name AutoCorrect automatically resolves the common side effects that occur when a user renames a database object. For example, when a user renames a field in a table, the change is automatically propagated to dependent objects such as queries and forms so the user can continue to work with the application. Convert databases to prior access version. Access users can now down-rev save a database into a previous version of Access, making it easier to share database files with users of different versions. In Access 2002, the database window was changed to accommodate the new objects exposed in Access 2002, enhancing usability and consistency with the new user interface metaphor used throughout Office XP. Subdatasheets provide a picture-in-picture view to focus on and edit related data all in the same window. Additionally, users can now export data from Microsoft Access to Microsoft Excel simply by dragging and dropping Access objects (tables, queries, etc.) from the database container to Microsoft Excel. This allows a fast way to export data into Excel quickly for further analysis.