On 11 Nov 2003 at 15:12, Laura Bruzas wrote:

> 3 quick questions.
>
> 1) Outlook doesn't have the capacity to capture snail mail addresses
> and create mailing labels. It's mostly for email addresses.  TRUE or FALSE

  Outlook is primarily for reading and sending email.  As an accessory to
that function, it provides an "address book" to make it easy to find and re-
use email addresses.  The address book function can also store other
information about the people you correspond with.
  Populating the additional fields of the address book in an automated way
is not trivial.  Recognizing and capturing smail-mail addresses from random
plain text is a VERY HARD problem; you will not find a good solution for
less than ten times the retail price of Microsoft Office.

> 2) Microsoft Access is easy to learn and one doesn't need to hire a pro
> to help them set up a database.  TRUE or FALSE

  This is a myth that was commonly repeated about dBase in the 1980s and
about COBOL in the 1960s.  Good database design *can* be learned by trial
and error, but do you really want your business to be part of someone's
"learning experience"?  (By comparison, learning to navigate the Access user
interface *is* relatively easy.)

> 3) If someone wanted to hire an Access pro, where would they look?

  In our area, there's a free monthly computer magazine with a classified
section in the back.  There are usually half a dozen small local outfits
advertising their services to set up a custom database.
  I believe similar magazines are offered in most large metropolitan areas.
If you live outside one of those, your options may be more limited.

David Gillett

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