This document provides guidance on developing advanced skills in Microsoft Access. It outlines tasks to create tables, relationships, enter data, and build queries to manage appointments and prevent double bookings at a beauty spa. The tasks include creating validation rules, indexes, input masks, and relationships between tables to schedule appointments while avoiding conflicts. Queries are designed to find existing appointments on given dates, delete those dates from available slots, and archive old appointment records.

1. Mrs Neal May 2004
ADVANCED ACCESS SKILLS
Introduction
This guide will help you to develop your MS Access skill to an advanced level. You are
required to demonstrate your abilities within the implementation section of your
project. You are expected to implement your solution unaided, to a high quality with
no defects.
Scenario
A local Beauty Spa currently records all appointments manually. The Spa has six
Beauty consultants all are able to provide treatments on offer. The computerised
system must prevent double-bookings, be easy to use and re-useable.
Tables
Task 1. Create the following tables, using appropriate use of validation rules, input
masks, field sizes, indexes, default values and the required option:

2. Mrs Neal May 2004
Indexes
No Don’t index the field
Yes (DuplicatesOK) Most of the time you want to allow duplicate
records.
Yes (No Duplicates) Key fields should be set to No Duplicates
because a key field must be unique. You don’t
want two customers with the same customer
number.
Validation
At A Level standard you should be creating validation rules and validation text
(message that is displayed to user if data is incorrect) along side input masks to
ensure the integrity of data entered into your database. Below are some examples of
how validation can be used. You can mix and match the operators as appropriate:
Field Validation Rule Definition
Type
Number >10 Must be greater than 10
Number <> 12 Cannot be 12
Number >=5 Greater then or equal t5
Number > 20 And < 200 Must be between 20 and 200
(non inclusive)
Number >= 20 And <=200 Must be between 20 and 200
(inclusive)
Number <= 30 Or >=100 Must be lower than 30 or
greater than 100 (inclusive)
Date >= Date () Must be today’s date or later
Date >= Date () or Is Null Must be today’s date, later or
blank
Date < Date () Must be earlier than today’s
date
Date >= #1/1/96# And <#1/1/97# Must be a date in 1996
Text Like "A????" Entry must contain 5 characters
and start with the letter A

3. Mrs Neal May 2004
Input Masks
At A Level standard you should be creating inputs marks yourself and not using the
wizard. Few projects are more gratifying than making things yourself. All input
masks must be shown on your table designs. Below are the codes most commonly
used:
Required Action Required Code Optional Code
Numbers 0-9 only 0 9
Letters A to Z only L ?
Letters or numbers A a
Any character or space & C
Relationships
Task 2. Create the following relationships, click the Relationships
icon:
Linking
tbl_Avaliable_Appointments
to tbl_Client_Appointments

4. Mrs Neal May 2004
Data Entry
Task 3. Enter the following records into appropriate tables:

5. Mrs Neal May 2004
Queries
The main functionality of this system is to allow appointment booking and prevent
double bookings. The first set of queries are use to prevent double bookings of
appointments – solution given by http://www.advanced-ict.info/
Task 4. The first query locates appointments that have been booked for a certain
therapist on a certain date. Create this query as shown below:
Task 5. You now need to create a query that searches for appointments that have
been booked on a particular day and deletes these from available appointments:
The query includes tbl_Avaliable_Appointments and qry_appointments-on-
certain-dates – you must add these tables.
Create a relationship between the tables.
Right-click and select Join Properties.
Select the second option – Include ALL
records and click OK.

6. Mrs Neal May 2004
Complete the query by entering the following criteria:
Task 6. Your system is required to be reusable – within this task you will learn
how to archive data that is no longer needed. Archiving reduces information load
within the main table. You will need to create two advanced queries to perform
this operation.
Within the database window – right-click tbl_Client_Appointments and
select Copy:
Right-click again and select Paste.
Type in the following table name:
Start a new query, add tble_Client_Appointments and select all fields.
Select Query from the toolbar and choose Append Query: