NEED Data Base Help

[FORGO]

I am an old guy who needs to know how to start and run a data base. I have Mic. Acell. I have it installed. Belive it or not there is not one tutorial that tells you how to run it or how to start. But it give you all kinds of exsplanations on what it does. Is there a book cd or tutorial that will tell me HOW TO START. I can drive almost anything that runs. I know how to count to ten and I am above grade school level of intellegence. Bill Gates told me if I learned the DOS commands the sky was the limit. I have reached my limit know I want to go on. I don't want to put a man on the moon. I don't want to keep track of the national debt DEBT. I only wanted what Bill Gates promised the simple knowledge to pursue my aspirations. Will some one please help.

[K9Pup]

Originally Posted by FORGO

I am an old guy who needs to know how to start and run a data base. I have Mic. Acell.

I assume you mean MicroSoft Excel???? Going from knowing nothing about excel to maintaining a horse racing database in it is a MAJOR step. I would suggest you look at canned horse racing software products that might give you what you want.

[Hammerhead]

Start with a good book that will guide you step by step through acess or excel. In the computer section of a good book store there are many. If I can do it anyone can. Get them for the version of the program you are using.
Start with the basics and go from there.
I have many from 97 on up and use them all the time.

[raybo]

Originally Posted by FORGO

I am an old guy who needs to know how to start and run a data base. I have Mic. Acell. I have it installed. Belive it or not there is not one tutorial that tells you how to run it or how to start. But it give you all kinds of exsplanations on what it does. Is there a book cd or tutorial that will tell me HOW TO START. I can drive almost anything that runs. I know how to count to ten and I am above grade school level of intellegence. Bill Gates told me if I learned the DOS commands the sky was the limit. I have reached my limit know I want to go on. I don't want to put a man on the moon. I don't want to keep track of the national debt DEBT. I only wanted what Bill Gates promised the simple knowledge to pursue my aspirations. Will some one please help.

Like K9Pup, I assume you mean Excel. And you are right, there aren't any tutorials on Excel DB use with Excel. However, a search on the MS site, forums that deal with Excel, should bring you some information. With the new Excel, DB should be much easier to get into and actually use effectively. I've been struggling with Access for some months now, trying to get a racing DB going. Might be a reasonable alternative.

Forgo,

http://www.lpts.edu/Academic_Resourc...e_Tutorial.pdf

Is one tutorial - just use Google to search for more.

[misscashalot]

does anyone here think Robert should start with MS Works which is a lot easier to handle than Excel?

[gjones6794]

You might try enrolling in the local junior college for some classes.

[Gibbon]

Forgo,

Age has nothing to do with your ability to learn. Are you willing?

Excel is fairly straight forward. Access can be intimidating to fairly new computer user.

I would recommend Video Professor. I have no affiliation with this site. Only positive personal experience. VP sells cd/dvd’s which can walk you to the intermediate level. VP assumes no prior computer training. VP is a little pricy but excellent – see how it’s done than do it yourself teaching method.
http://www.videoprofessor.com

[K9Pup]

I still say the problem here is going from nothing to a lot in one giant step. I would suggest starting with a handicapping software package. Learn it and decide your likes/dislikes of the package. At the same time begin to learn excel and reach the step where you can maybe take output from the software package and actually use it in excel.

The BIG part of getting a "handicapping database" into excel is getting the data from whatever source into a format usable by excel. In most cases this is no small step. One even experienced excel users have problems doing.

Originally Posted by K9Pup

I still say the problem here is going from nothing to a lot in one giant step. I would suggest starting with a handicapping software package. Learn it and decide your likes/dislikes of the package. At the same time begin to learn excel and reach the step where you can maybe take output from the software package and actually use it in excel.

The BIG part of getting a "handicapping database" into excel is getting the data from whatever source into a format usable by excel. In most cases this is no small step. One even experienced excel users have problems doing.

I would say an even bigger hurdle is that for any chance of success you need to know what the finished database article needs to be well before you start any coding. That requires a great deal of planning, discipline, knowledge about horseracing, datamanagement, parsing and coding. You also have a new burden of keeping it all up to date. The $input disbenefit far exceeds the likely $income benefit.

I agree, buying in or using free services from any reliable source beats all that hands down - so don't reinvent yet another square wheel. Use your database work to concentrate only on the small bits these services leave out is very sound advice.

[cj]

Since you mention database, I'm going to assume you mean Access and not Excel.

Try this:

Access 2007 in Easy Steps

These books are great for a beginner. When people ask me for help, I have them read the books first if I have them, and go from there.

[raybo]

Originally Posted by cj

Since you mention database, I'm going to assume you mean Access and not Excel.

Try this:

Access 2007 in Easy Steps

These books are great for a beginner. When people ask me for help, I have them read the books first if I have them, and go from there.

We were exploring the possibility of using Excel 2007 as a DB because of the greater limits in it. Many of us are already familiar/skilled in Excel. Using Access is a huge step for non-DB'ers. I've been messing around with it for several months now, trying to get just a very basic horse racing DB set up and going, haven't given up yet but it is testing my computer knowledge far more than I ever expected.

Excel was a snap for me, even recording and later writing macros with VB took very little brain power, just a little trial and error. I even had a very limited DB of races and results in Excel that I used for testing new formulas and grading systems, etc. The problem was the time required for Excel to run through all the race cards and issue results (about 10 minutes for 200 race cards). To expand to a useable number of cards was possible but the time to run one cycle through many hundreds or thousands of cards would be tremendous.

[Topcat]

With Excel 2007 going to a row limit of over 1 million rows, using Excel for database functions becomes a good option.

[Tom]

Does it have query options and filtering like Access?
I've always found Access the way to store and retrieve data and Excel to manipulate it.
How about Access 2007 - same number of columns or still limited?

[K9Pup]

Originally Posted by Tom

Does it have query options and filtering like Access?
I've always found Access the way to store and retrieve data and Excel to manipulate it.
How about Access 2007 - same number of columns or still limited?

The current (2003) version of excel has query and filters. Not the same as Access but some people are able to do what they want using them. Looks like Access 2007 still has the 255 column limit on tables.