Microsoft Access 2021: Built-In Functions

Name: Microsoft Access 2021: Built-In Functions
Author: John Varan

Learn how to use built-in functions.

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, welcome to Knowledge City's course on Microsoft Access 2021, Intermediate. My name is John Varan, and in these lessons, you will learn about built-in functions. In this lesson, I will give you an overview of built-in functions. A function is a piece of code that takes in some values, does some calculations on them, and then returns a value to you. Microsoft access can take in any number of input values ranging from zero to as many as you want. Though on average, they require just a few. They always return either zero or one value, however. Microsoft Access lets you write your own custom functions in a programming language called Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA for short. However, learning how to do that is beyond the scope of this lesson. Fortunately, Microsoft Access has over 100 built-in functions that cover the most common situations. The built-in functions can be used in a variety of places in Microsoft Access. The most common place is to use them in queries, which means their results can also be displayed in forms and reports. Built-in functions can also be used when writing expressions for calculated values and for validation rules. This makes them quite versatile and can allow you to do many things which you would not be able to do without them. Since there are so many built-in functions, Microsoft Access groups them in several categories. These are conversion functions, which are used for converting between data types, date and time functions, which deal with dates and times, general functions, financial functions, usually dealing with amortization, inspection functions, math functions of various types, text functions, and the one category not displayed in this expression builder are the aggregate functions, which are functions that are operate on a set of records and then return a single value. In these lessons, we'll go through each of these categories and discuss what the most common functions in each can be used for. Once you become familiar with which functions are available and what types of things that can be used for, it's a simple matter to look at each one up as you need them. So there is no reason to memorize all of them. In fact, Microsoft Access even provides a handy selection window where you can look up the different functions by category and see not only what the functions are called, what parameters they require. Thank you for watching. Stay tuned for the next lesson where I will show you about conversion built-in functions.

Intermediate Provider : John Varan 8 Lessons · 38m in English

Course Description

Microsoft Access comes with over one hundred pre-written built-in functions for you to use in your database applications. Built-in functions are pre-written pieces of code you can use to enhance your queries, reports, and forms. These built-in functions cover a wide variety of uses, and are grouped into different categories based on their applications. Knowing how to use built-in functions gives you a whole new suite of resources for organizing your Microsoft Access database.

In this module, we will explore Microsoft Access 2021’s built-in functions. You will learn how to best apply these pre-written functions, and about their different categories. We’ll go over built-in text functions, which manipulate strings and other data types, and conversion functions, which you can use to convert between different data types. You’ll also learn about financial functions for working with things like statistics, as well as math functions, which range in applications from basic mathematics to trigonometry. Finally, we’ll explore Microsoft Access’s expression builder, which can assist you in building complex expressions by pointing and clicking.

What You'll Learn

Understand what built-in functions are and how they enhance queries, reports, and forms in Microsoft Access 2021
Identify the different categories of built-in functions and their applications
Apply text functions to manipulate strings and other data types
Use conversion functions to convert between different data types
Work with financial and math functions, ranging from basic mathematics to trigonometry
Build complex expressions using the Microsoft Access expression builder by pointing and clicking

Key Takeaways

Microsoft Access comes with over one hundred pre-written built-in functions for use in database applications.
Built-in functions are pre-written pieces of code that enhance queries, reports, and forms, and are grouped into categories based on their applications.
Text functions manipulate strings and other data types, while conversion functions convert between different data types.
Math functions range in application from basic mathematics to trigonometry.
The expression builder assists in building complex expressions by pointing and clicking.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this course cover?

It explores Microsoft Access 2021's built-in functions, including how to apply them and their different categories. It covers text functions, conversion functions, financial functions, math functions, and the expression builder.

What categories of built-in functions are included?

The lessons cover Conversion Functions, Date and Time Functions, General and Financial Built-In Functions, Inspection Functions, Math Functions, Text Functions, and Aggregate Functions.

What skills will I gain from this course?

You will gain skills in Microsoft Access, Access query languages, the function module, Microsoft Data Access Components, stored functions, and user defined functions.

What is the expression builder?

The expression builder is a Microsoft Access tool that can assist you in building complex expressions by pointing and clicking.

Why are built-in functions useful in Microsoft Access?

Knowing how to use built-in functions gives you a whole new suite of resources for organizing your Microsoft Access database and enhancing your queries, reports, and forms.