new to access, simple database help

[jr131981]

ive used excel extensively for years, but am completely new to access.

to help learn access, i want to do a couple of small things, one being tracking my personal expenses.



basically i just want to keep track of the date, amount, method of payment, and type of expense. the type of expense would have subcategories, for example, vehicle would be a main category, with gas or oil change or repairs being a sub category. the goal of the database would be to track spending and to 'analyze' the spending given a certain time frame.

ive downloaded several generic templates but am thoroughly confused, and the help file doesnt seem to address generic questions.

if anyone can point me in the right direction on how to start, that would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

[ajetrumpet]

jr,

do you have an iPhone? Personally, if I had one of those, I would simply keep track of them there. Why a database?

An actually, if you'd like to tell us the reason WHY you're doing this I'd kinda like to hear it. I give a lot of financial advice to folks in this area. As in, if they actually need to be doing the things that they're doing, based on how they want to live their life.

Just an idea for you. But I'm still interested in why you're doing it..

[jr131981]

i do have an iphone, but i want to learn how to use access.

any suggestions on how or where to start?

thanks

[ajetrumpet]

yes,

If you don't have any experience with Access, I would suggest one of two things:

1) try to make it on your own by googling to death, or:
2) download a template for expenses and then do step 1.

with step 2, you'll be months farther along than ignoring step 2. There are expense tracking templates everywhere. I believe MS has some, but most of them, I think, are based in Excel. MS has dedicated pages for templates. But most of the better ones will probably not be found on MS's sites.

[jr131981]

not to be rude but ive come here for an answer to my, what i assume is a very easy, question. im not sure why, with all the page views, that no one is willing to explain what needs to be done. i mean ive seen others download and troubleshoot/debug others databases, but no one has the time to write what cant be more than a few sentences explaining how to create a very simple database???

ive already googled many many different keywords to death, found several templates but, as ive said, am thoroughly confused.

the new ribbon design that office uses doesnt exactly make things simpler for someone whos used to the old drop down menu style.

[ajetrumpet]

no one has the time to write what cant be more than a few sentences explaining how to create a very simple database???

not to be rude back, bud, but there is NO easy way to explain databases. And I must apologize as well, some of my posts can be taken as rude, but as of late I haven't seen many people take offense to them.

I am a person that does not give answers, more or less because I either don't have the time or feel that doing that hinders worldwide learning. So either of those reasons is why you got from me what you got.

And to add, I'm not sure if you work with IT depts where you're employed, but I haven't met many IT people that can say that "anything" is simple. Because nothing ever is. I believe I gave the right answer to you here, but it's certainly not the same as most others would give.

I'm not going to contribute anymore here, because I have gathered that you're looking for someone to work for you. I could be wrong though.

Good luck with finding a simple answer to the question. I truly hope ya do.

[alansidman]

jr131981;
Here is a white paper on relational databases that I think will help you to understand what a database is and how to structure it.

http://forums.aspfree.com/microsoft-...es-208217.html

Alan