what are the advantages and disadvantages of using Microsoft Access vs Microsoft Excel?

Question

I need to make an invoice using microsoft excel but i need to first consider two software solutions and i dont have much of an idea when it comes to things like that.

Answer 1

well basically access u have to input the information deciding on field size etc..

but then once it is complete i can then do other things to it while in excel so that u can add more records etc and once in excel mode if u type soemthing whuch is not part of the validation rule etc.. a message appears telling you what is wrong.



so excel is like the final product of your work after access, hope this helped

Answer 2

If it is a one-off Invoice then the program to use is probably Word, using a table format. If, however it is for regular invoicing and customers buy on a regular basis and you have set up Excel as a sales ledger, then yes you can easily do it in Excel but in reality Access is the program to use where you set up a report and perhaps on a monthly basis, run your query to extract all purchases for that month and the report, based on that query will automatically produce a report.



Excel is primarily for working with figures and again for a simple invoice you could link those figures to a Word Document. You could also import or merely link your spreadsheet to Access.



As I said, it depends on the complexity - if this is IT courseware project and you have to choose merely between Excel and Access, then it would be interesting to know exactly what the project is to be able to answer more appropriately.

Answer 3

Excel is used to do lots of calculations and such.



Access is used to manipulate lots of data. In access you can link tables and such.



If you are making AN invoice, probably use excel, because it's more formatting friendly to the end user. If you plan on making a LOT of invoices, you may look into Access.... but if you need to do any significant amount of math, I would suggest you stick with Excel. It's incredibly powerful.

Answer 4

It has to be against something else. I can't see any disadvantages. I could understand the question if it was what are the advantages of using Microsoft Excel, as against (for argument's sake) "Something else" Excel.

Answer 5

Access is just a database with no visualization.

Excel allows you to see the data in different ways.



Using both is the best by having Access to collect the data and Excel to display it.