Can Access....?

[brendine]

Good Morning,



I am new to Access, but am very proficient in other Office products and was wondering if there was an easier way of accomplishing my goal by using Access rather than Excel. Here it goes:

I would like to take our companies Needs Assessment with clients in a form and then the questions answered in the form to automatically populate a proposal, using a proposal template. My thought was to use Excel and a Mail Merge, but Access should provide an easier solution?

Thank you!

[CJ_London]

Sounds like Access would be more appropriate. Take a look at some of the templates to see if any can get you going

[redpenner]

Using an Access query as a data source for a Word mail merge is no easier or harder than using a spreadsheet. However setting up the Access database and query (if they don't already exist) could be a significant project. If your Excel data is working well with the merge, and you are satisfied with your data entry process into Excel, there may not be any benefit to using Access for that particular mail merge. Of course, using Access allows for a lot more flexibility when you want to use the data for other projects.

[NTC]

Access has a report generator - which can save the doc to PDF or print out; or an Access table/query can be the data source to a Word merge just like Excel. The Word merge approach makes sense when end users need to change the template language a lot - as everyone knows Word. The Report approach makes sense if the template language is pretty much set and only needs changed occasionally by the administrator (Access developer).

Many serious Access projects begin on excel until they hit the wall as there are key differences:
a. Access is fully able to support multiple simultaneous users
b. Access can control/design the User Interface

In many ways Access has 2 personalities; it can be an end user product similar to Excel or it can be a development environment similar to Visual Studio.