What is Microsoft Access & What Do You Use It For?

You've probably heard of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but you might not know what Microsoft Access is. Access is a database application. It's designed for storing large amounts of data, and for making it easy to automate the things you do on a daily basis. You can track anything you want in Microsoft Access: Customers, Contacts, Orders, Products, Mailings, Finances, Collection, Scheduling... literally anything at all.

A lot of people switch to Access when they outgrow Excel. Excel isn't very good at storing large amounts of data or automating repetitive tasks. Access makes it super easy to relate different types of data together. For example, if you're tracking customers and the cars they own, you can relate them together with a CustomerID. This way you can pull up the customer's record and instantly see the cars they drive. Same with contacts, orders, and anything else related to that customer.

You can build a nice user-friendly interface in Microsoft Access very easily. This is great if you have other people using your database who may not be computer experts. You can do all of your reporting right in Access. No need for Microsoft Word. You can print out financial reports, order summaries, mailing labels. You can even write printed letters and send mass emails right from Access.

Now you might not have Access on your computer even if you have Microsoft Office. That's because it's not part of the Personal version of Office. You need Office Professional or the Microsoft 365 for Business. But it's not that expensive. The whole Office Suite less than $13 per month, which is a bargain.

The list of things you can do with Microsoft Access is too long to cover here. I've literally just scratched the surface. If you'd like to learn more about what Access can do and how it can help your business (even if it's just your side hustle) come to my web site and take my FREE 4-hour course that covers all of the basics.