Microsoft Access 2007

Office Access 2007 has made it easier to filter data, bringing clarity to business questions. View larger.

Collect information from others by e-mail with InfoPath (or HTML) forms generated by Office Access 2007. View larger.

Moving your Office Access 2007 application to Windows SharePoint Services enables browser access to information. View larger.

Editing forms in interactive design mode is a true WYSIWIG experience. View larger.

Office Access 2007 provides a completely redesigned user interface and close integration with Outlook contacts. View larger.

Office Access 2007 has been updated with a fresh look so that you can easily create, modify, and work with database solutions. View larger.

Pre-built Applications to Better Manage Information
Featuring pre-built applications that you can modify or adapt to suit changing business needs, Access 2007 gives you the option of collecting information through forms in e-mail or importing data from external applications. You can also create and edit detailed reports that display sorted, filtered, and grouped information in a way that helps you make better sense of the data for informed decision-making.

Getting Started Screen
The new Getting Started screen includes a variety of pre-built database solutions that you can use right out of the box to track contacts, events, issues, assets, tasks, and more--or treat them like templates, and enhance and refine them to accommodate the kind of information you want to track or the way in which you want to track it. As other application templates become available from Microsoft Office Online, they will be advertised in the Getting Started screen so you'll always be up to date on new technology that can help your business run more smoothly.

Quickly Create Tables
Access 2007 features a new Navigation Pane which provides a comprehensive view of tables, forms, queries, and reports. You can even create custom groups to organize and see all the forms and reports related to a single table. In addition, Access 2007 makes it easier to work directly within a datasheet to create and customize tables. Enter information into a data cell--just as you would do in Microsoft Office Excel--and if it's a new value, Access 2007 automatically adds a new field and detects the data type (for example, date, number, or text). You can even paste Excel tables into a new datasheet, and Access 2007 will build all the fields and recognize the data types automatically. To help save you even more time, design and modify the form layout in real time on the screen, and preview your form as you build it. And for professional-looking results, Access 2007 provides rich text support for data stored in tables, so you can bold and italicize key data with ease.

Editing reports in Office Access 2007 offers easy grouping and editing with interactive design mode. View larger.

Work With Multi-Value Fields
Access 2007 supports complex data types, which means you can create columns that accept more than one value in a cell. For example, if you assign a task to more than one person, you can include both names in the cell. Windows SharePoint Services technology is compatible with these complex data types to help ensure data symmetry between the local and Web-based data stores.

Attach Documents and Files to Your Database
Your applications can hold information that is more interesting and helpful than ever before. You can attach multiple files--such as photos, documents, or spreadsheets--to individual records within the data store for easy reference. If the file isn't a compressed format, Access 2007 automatically compresses it for you, saving hard disk space. When it comes to consolidating information, Access 2007 lets you import contact records from Outlook 2007.

Interactive Form and Report Design
Access 2007 features an intuitive, user-friendly, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) forms design interface. This means you can design and modify the form layout in real time on the screen and preview your form as you build it. With the WYSIWYG design interface, you'll be able to build forms very quickly, spending more time doing the work and less time on design and formatting issues. You can also manipulate the report layout directly while browsing the data in the report designer, so you don't need to run the report to see how it looks on the page. This makes it easier to create great-looking reports in much less time.

More Accessible Reports
The new report browse mode makes reports more accessible. By using CTRL+F, you can find records, copy the data into other applications, and get to detailed records to edit the data. With the new filtering functionality, you can get clearer information on which to base decisions. To help keep things running smoothly, the improved Grouping Pane provides a clear display of data groupings so that you can preview changes as you are applying them to reports. You can easily add totals, subtotals, counts, and other elements that help you analyze the data. To help organize data, group the information in one or more layers and add subtotals.

Collecting and Sharing Information
Access 2007 simplifies the process of collecting information from others by building the data collection form automatically in InfoPath 2007 or HTML in the body of the e-mail message. You can then send that form to recipients, using e-mail addresses from your Outlook contacts or from Access itself. Outlook 2007 processes the incoming forms and saves the data in your Access 2007 data store, effectively updating the data in your tracking application immediately, without any need for retyping.

Web Collaboration With Windows SharePoint Services
By moving your Access 2007 files to a Windows SharePoint Services Web site, you can more readily share information, audit revision history, recover deleted information, set data access permissions, and back up your information at regular intervals. For instance, Web sites based on Windows SharePoint Services provide a place where your team can communicate, share documents, and work together on a project. With Access 2007, you can publish your Access files to libraries or move the application to Windows SharePoint Services, moving the data and front-end database to the server so that your team can interact with it easily through the browser. Forms and reports can then be viewed, updated, or deleted directly on the Windows SharePoint Services site according to the established permission settings.

Work Offline
Using Access 2007, you can work with Windows SharePoint Services offline. If you're traveling, for example, you can maintain a local copy of a SharePoint list on your portable computer, where you can edit and query the list as though it were any other Access table. Moreover, forms and reports that use the SharePoint list are fully interactive--and Office Access 2007 can later synchronize the local list with the online list when you bring your portable computer back online.

Integration with Windows SharePoint Services
Access 2007 authors can use business logic created with the workflow support in Windows SharePoint Services to build collaborative workgroup applications. Use this support to automatically assign tasks to other users, report on project status, and help ensure that tasks are completed on time. For added convenience, all Windows SharePoint Services tasks can be viewed inside Office Access 2007 or Outlook 2007, depending upon your work style. Windows SharePoint Services lists can even be accessed through mobile phones, so remote users can stay current on changing business information.

Manage and Audit Sensitive Information
To make this software even safer and more consistent with other 2007 Office system programs, Access 2007 includes improved as well as new security features. Unified trust decisions are integrated with Office Trust Center, and trusted locations mean databases in security-enhanced folders. Conversely, you can load an Access application with code or macros disabled to help provide a safe experience. Or you can track records and see who created, edited, and deleted them. Whichever option you choose, you can rest assured that your data is safe.