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  • Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2003

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Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2003

4.0 out of 5 stars (18)

What Alison¿s book offers over other books in that she is able to take a highly technical topic and present it in a manner that is easy to comprehend. It is a book that the reader will often want to read from cover to cover, but it can also act as an excellent reference. Readers of this book will learn:

  • Access 11 application development and real-world solutions to specific development and programming problems.
  • Professional programming techniques backed by concise, no-nonsense explanations of the underlying theories.
  • Debugging and troubleshooting methods to solve problems quickly and get stalled development projects back on track.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Microsoft Access has the steepest learning curve of all the Microsoft Office applications. Its basic functions aren't really intuitive, and users typically need to do some programming as part of their first Access project. For those reasons, Access is the Office application for which Office users--even experienced, highly competent ones--tend to need help learning. Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Access 2003 is a new addition to the shelf of Access manuals, and it's one of the best. Balter does a great job of helping a novice Access user (someone who can open a database and edit fields, but can do little more) become an accomplished user. In other words, this book teaches Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming as it applies to Access. The word "Mastering" is appropriate in its title.

Balter's basic approach is to introduce a concept (say, the Implements keyword or ADO Database objects) and quickly explain its purpose with prose, then provide an example of how the concept works in practice. Which is to say, she provides a code sample. Because of this strategy, almost every page of this book has code on it. However, the author appears to have made a conscious effort to keep her code snippets short and easily comprehensible. Long, difficult-to-trace listings that span multiple pages are thankfully absent. Balter also does a good job of illustrating the Access development environment, including many screen shots of Access at work and of the applications that result from her code. This is a detailed, carefully considered book that will make sense to all but the most inexperienced Access users. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to write applications with Microsoft Access 2003. Noteworthy coverage deals with the Access way of handling object orientation, clever form-design strategies, and scores of techniques for performing various procedures on databases. Security coverage is good, too.

From the Back Cover

What Alison¿s book offers over other books in that she is able to take a highly technical topic and present it in a manner that is easy to comprehend. It is a book that the reader will often want to read from cover to cover, but it can also act as an excellent reference. Readers of this book will learn:

  • Access 11 application development and real-world solutions to specific development and programming problems.
  • Professional programming techniques backed by concise, no-nonsense explanations of the underlying theories.
  • Debugging and troubleshooting methods to solve problems quickly and get stalled development projects back on track.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sams Publishing
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 2004
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 1392 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0672325500
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0672325502
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.75 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.34 x 2.08 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 out of 5 stars (18)

About the author

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Alison Balter
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Alison Balter is the founder of InfoTechnology Partners, Inc., a computer consulting firm in California. She is a highly experienced trainer and consultant, specializing in Windows applications. During her 17 years in the computer industry, she has helped many Fortune 500 corporations as well as government agencies. The author of over 300 internationally-marketed computer training videos for KeyStone Learning Systems Corporation, Alison has also written several bestselling books for Sams Publishing.

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
18 global ratings
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Top reviews from the United States

  • 5 out of 5 stars
    If you only buy one book on Access development. . .
    Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2004
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    Do you want a book that will cover more area about Access development than you could ever imagine? This is it. Don't even think about "Should I buy this" - just get it. Alison has a superb way of writing, and her organization of topics is just short of perfect.

    I use this book in my Access Development class at a local college. It covers the necessary topics on the Access objects and is easily understood by even beginning developers.

    Well documented with code examples. And the CD has all the book's code included. A fine reference book that I use almost daily.

    5 people found this helpful
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
    An Advanced Introduction
    Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2006
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    This text is nothing if not thorough. It covers virtually every aspect of using Microsoft Access 2003 and most of it is done in a clear and thorough manner. It does not only teach the use of the program, it teaches the use of relational databases and some of the theory behind them. Best of all, it teaches good habits which, when adhered to, cut down on problems later on down the line. It is an excellent text.

    There are some things it could do better. The book ships with a disk that has plenty of examples of database objects and of VBA programming code. The examples generally make the points they are intended to make, particularly the programming ones, but they could be better. If they were to build upon each other towards the completion of a greater project, I believe some of the points would be better made. Instead, they are generally isolated examples and too much use is made of the venerable old Northwind Trading Company database which ships with access.

    This book is meant as an introduction but it is a fairly advanced one. Persons reading it would be well served to have some programming experience in the later chapters although the early chapters should be very accessible for all. After the basics, it goes into more advanced topics such as programming and use as a distributed application.

    18 people found this helpful
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  • 2 out of 5 stars
    Not a Reference, Not Easy to Skip Around
    Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2007
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    I am a programmer with extensive 3GL and database experience, and wanted to get to know Access better. The reviews and table of contents showed the book to be thorough, and online browsing proved it a very readable text.

    This book seems to be a compilation of her training seminars. So while it is extensive in its coverage, and very readable, after two months I still cannot use it to look up a concept or function in the index and get a solid introduction or clear picture of how to use it.

    Organizationally, it is difficult to pick out one topic, such as click events, and get a handle on it. The topics aren't always listed in the - extensive - index. Further, as explained in the book intro, topics are often covered piecemeal, as is relevant to the overall application being built throughout the book.

    Last and most disappointing, I did not find enough definitions and explanations to help me understand the terminology specific to Access. Instead I had to jump about the book, reading every snippet on a topic, and piece it together myself.

    12 people found this helpful
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  • 5 out of 5 stars
    Great book!
    Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2010
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    I've been using her books since forever and only bought this because my old one for Access XP was falling apart after years of use. It's the best Access book I've ever used. If you want to learn Access, buy this book.

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  • 3 out of 5 stars
    Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2003
    Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2005
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    comes with a fairly good cd that ends part way through what would have been a good primer, with a lead-in to purchase a rather expensive follow-on. disappointing

    3 people found this helpful
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  • 5 out of 5 stars
    Review of Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2003
    Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2009
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    It meets my needs for now. The book is laid out well and easy to understand. Not much engineerese there. I highly recommend it.

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  • 5 out of 5 stars
    The Bible of MS Access!!!
    Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2007
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    I bought this book about a year ago when I landed a job at which I am responsible for designing, creating, and administering various Access databases. I have used Access for about 4 years, so I thought that I was ready to tackle any task that was thrown my way - until the company started throwing advanced tasks my way. I immediately went out and bought Alison Balter's book. I scanned through the book for about 2 hours when I first bought it. I bookmarked several pages that I thought could help me out with my Access projects. The next day at work, I started to apply the information in this book immediately. I keep this book by my side at all times! I keep the book in my car to make sure that I never leave it at home by mistake. This isn't a beginner book (the user level on the back says "intermediate-advanced") so it would be good to have some Access knowledge before using this book. This book isn't a "hold your hand" book or a "step-by-step" book. It's a book that will take the knowledge of any intermediate-advanced Access user to the next level. What makes it even better is Alison herself. I was asked to create a report that uses a form to gather the criteria for the report. I was trying to utilize a technique that Alison showed in chapter 10 of the book ("Advanced Report Techniques"), but I didn't have all of the code because my son broke my CD. I e-mailed her and asked her if there was a place where I could download the files. She replied the same day, and sent all of the books CD content to me! I was able to use the chapter 10 files to get the report working properly. Thanks to Alison and her book (which I have used to do several neat and advanced things), I'm being viewed as an Access genius here at work. When/if my company upgrades to Access 2007, I will definitely upgrade to Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2007. More-than-likely, I'll buy the book the same day! Thanks Alison!

    6 people found this helpful
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  • 2 out of 5 stars
    Good starting point if you are forced to run 2013
    Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2015
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    Returned it! Not all that great if you are a power user

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