In may cases you will not need to work with all the data in your tables. This can be accomplish in Access by using Select Queries. Queries allow you to ask questions of about the data in your tables and the design of a query will tell Access what information to retrieve and display.
Select queries are the most common and basic type of query in Access.
Other standard types which are available include queries which will let you update, append or delete records based on your query criteria. In addition, a number of more complex queries can be performed by using the Query Wizard such as Crosstab, Find Duplicates, Find Unmatched, and Archive queries. Though only Select queries are covered in this beginning guide, the techniques are similar for the others and the Query Wizard works in much the same way as the other Wizards presented in this manual. Before we move on the exercises in which we will construct a number of queries, let's take a moment to review some basics. Besides being able to pick which fields a query will contain, you can also provide criteria so that only certain records will be selected and displayed by the queries.