Make more informed decisions by effectively tracking, reporting, and sharing information. Get started with the new Access.

With its improved interface and interactive design capabilities that do not require deep database knowledge, Microsoft Office Access 2007 helps you track and report information with ease. Get started quickly with prebuilt applications that you can modify or adapt to changing business needs. Collect information through forms in e-mail or import data from external applications. Create and edit detailed reports that display sorted, filtered, and grouped information in a way that helps you make sense of the data for informed decision-making. Share information by moving your Office Access 2007 files to a Windows SharePoint Services Web site, where you can audit revision history, recover deleted information, set data access permissions, and back up your information at regular intervals.

Start working immediately with the results-oriented features in Office Access 2007:

• Prebuilt solutions. The new Getting Started screen includes a variety of prebuilt database solutions. Use these applications right out of the box to track contacts, events, issues, assets, tasks, and more or treat them like templates, and enhance and refine them to accommodate the kind of information you want to track or the way in which you want to track it. As other application templates become available from Microsoft Office Online, they will be advertised in the Getting Started screen.
• Results-oriented user interface. Office Access 2007 has been updated with a fresh look that makes it easier to create, modify, and work with tracking applications (Access database solutions). The new results-oriented user interface (UI) is context-sensitive and optimized for efficiency and discoverability. From the nearly 1,000 available commands, the new UI displays only those relevant to the task you are performing at any given moment. In addition, the tabbed windows view and a new status bar, scroll bars, and title bar give applications built on Office Access 2007 a very modern look.
• Improved navigation. The new Navigation Pane provides a comprehensive view of tables, forms, queries, and reports. You can even create custom groups to organize and see all the forms and reports related to a single table.
• Quickly create tables. Office Access 2007 makes it easier to work directly within a datasheet to create and customize tables. Enter information into a data cell just as you do in Microsoft Office Excel. When you enter a new value, Office Access 2007 automatically adds a new field and detects the data type (for example, date, number, or text). You can even paste Excel tables into a new datasheet, and Office Access 2007 will build all the fields and recognize the data types automatically.
• Import contact records from Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. Office Access 2007 makes it easy to exchange an individual Access contact record with Office Outlook 2007. You can import an Outlook contact record into Office Access 2007; you can also export a contact record from Office Access 2007 and save it as a contact in Office Outlook 2007.
• Filter and sort data. Office Access 2007 makes it easier to filter data, bringing clarity to business questions. Different filter options are available for text, numbers, and date data types. For example, new filtering options make it easy to filter a date column for all records in Today, Yesterday, Last Week, Next Month, Future, Past, and so on. The filtering experience is consistent between Office Excel 2007 and Office Access 2007 so that you don't need to learn a new way to find the information they need.
• Work with multi-value fields. Office Access 2007 supports complex data types, so you can create columns that accept more than one value in a cell. For example, if you assign a task to more than one person, you can include both names in the cell. Windows SharePoint Services technology is compatible with these complex data types to help ensure data symmetry between the local and Web-based data stores.
• Attach documents and files to your database. Your applications can hold information that is more interesting and helpful than ever before. You can attach multiple files such as photos, documents, or spreadsheets to individual records within the data store for easy reference. If the file isn't a compressed format, Office Access 2007 automatically compresses it for you, saving hard disk space.
• Interactive forms design. Office Access 2007 features a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) forms design interface. You can design and modify the form layout in real time on the screen and preview your form as you build it. With the WYSIWYG design interface, you can build forms very quickly, spending more time doing the work and less time on design and formatting issues.
• Rich text. Bold text? Italics? No problem. Office Access 2007 provides rich text support for data stored in tables.