Microsoft Access is the world's leading desktop database
application, with approximately 12 million licensed copies worldwide
(according to Microsoft sources). With MS Access readily available
on many PCs at work, a large number of prospective users try their
hand at creating an Access database application to improve their
group's productivity and minimize information errors often caused by
maintaining data in spreadsheets. While Microsoft made many
improvements in Access 2007 to simplify database creation, there is
still much to learn when developing an Access database project. This
brief paper is intended to help you better gauge how complex your
project may be in order to evaluate the trade-offs between using a
spreadsheet-based method versus Microsoft Access.