They assist in the location of duplicate records, show all records that meet a specific criteria, or show correlations between groups of data. They also have the ability to permanently modify the data. As with other very powerful tools, caution should be used to avoid potentially disastrous results. The simplest way to extract valuable information from the data stored within a database is through a query. For instance, if a company wanted to find out how many clients it had in Utah, it could set up a simple query to identify everyone in their database who is specified as a client and has an address in Utah.
Queries are the driving force in making databases useful.
With this in mind this article will walk users through some of the basics of creating simple queries. To create a query, open the database window, click on the Query tab and then on the new button. For the purposes of this article, however, Design View is selected. As a default Access opens a Select Query , which means that no data will be created, updated or deleted during the running of the query. Update, Append, Delete and other types of queries are beyond the scope of this article and while useful, these powerful tools are best left to advanced users because they make immediate changes to live data.