Exam questions database

[Gedep]

Hello everyone



I'm new here and completely new to Access as wel.
I hope to find some answers before I do a deep dive into Acces. It may or may not be the best solution for my problem.

So I'm a chemistry teacher from The Netherlands. I have made A LOT of individual exam questions. The questions are in individual Word-documents. Some years ago I made a Excell-file to try and keep track of it all. I made a filter with several entries (i.e. level/topic/description etc). The final data field would contain a link to the Word-document. Problem is that I used to keep everything on a local disc. Nowadays everything is in the cloud, so I'm having some issues.

I'm wondering if Access would be a better solution. Is it possible to have the questions in Access, with layout and everything? Or would I have to link to individual Word-file as well?

Thank you in advance for any insights

Arjan

[June7]

This is a fairly common topic. Research for topic of questionnaire or survey database.

[Micron]

Since the cloud was mentioned, it might be pertinent to mention that you do not want to work on databases while opened in such locations. It would be fine to store files there, but they should be downloaded to local disk and opened from there. Your risk of db corruption increases if you work on Access db from cloud or even usb sticks. Maybe the risk with usb is not so great anymore but it happened to me once and I blame it on that.

Welcome to the forum, btw.

EDIT
If you want to pick and choose questions for a particular occasion, keeping the text in tables would be the way to go, and compile these in Access reports. If you simply want to repeatedly use the same batch of questions (and have a need for a lot of formatting) I'd store the path in a table and let Access open Word to get the document. The general consensus will be to not store documents in Access tables. Note that Access has a significant learning curve if you want to create a well designed db.

[Gedep]

Thank you for your answer. It's spot on.
I'm not looking for a database to quickly expert questionnaires. The exam questions will be larger exercises with text/context. All with layout etc. So if I understand you correctly these exercises aren't suited to store in tables.
If I have to link to word documents I'll keep working with Excel because it's probably easier. Colleagues will have to work with this as well... So if I'll do the deep dive, my colleagues might not be able/willing to follow.

Tnx

[Micron]

I suppose it's all a matter of perspective, but if this was a voting thread I'd venture to say no experienced Access developer will tell you Excel is better for this. Aside from the not so obvious fact that Excel makes for a poor relational database, it has the drawback that it limits you to one concurrent user and has virtually zero security (not that Access excels at that, but it can be said that it's miles better).

The issue with objects in Access tables is db bloat (file size). All you need is a table with file paths - not that much different than what you'd do in a sheet. As far as the ability of your colleagues to deal with a db, IMO it all comes down to how you design it. If well done, it's miles better. I recently expanded my helping out at Mr. Excel and I can tell you that it continues to amaze me what people want Excel to do when a db would be so much better. I guess that all comes down to not knowing what you don't know, or perhaps it's just too daunting for some to make the transition. If you decide to go the db route, let us know. I have some links that you should explore before jumping in. I'd bet dollars to donuts that if you use your Excel brain to build a db, you will get off on the wrong foot, so best not to just dive in.