Microsoft Access is one of the most underestimated products of the Microsoft Office suite, many MS Office users use Excel for tasks that should be accomplished using Access, which makes the task laborious, inconvenient and inefficient. Learning Microsoft Access is very important for any MS Office user as it’ll help the user accomplish many tasks in a faster, easier and more convenient way. If you’re a small business owner, office manager or even a doctor; learning Microsoft Access can help you build a database for your clients, inventory, employees and correlate all of these data together unlike Excel which can’t correlate any data.

Microsoft Access is a relational database management system (RDBMS) similar to MySQL. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica there are three types of database models; hierarchical model, network model and the relational model.

The aim of this article is to present and compare between various free online outlets that beginners can rely on to start learning Microsoft Access; so you won’t find a link to a forum or a single video, you won’t also find 2000 sources to learn Microsoft Access which is even more frustrating for beginners.

If you just want the bottom line (the road map to learn Microsoft Access) and you don’t wish to read the entire article then go to the “Bottom Line” section at the end of the article.

How to Learn Microsoft Access for Free from Scratch

Goodwill Community Foundation (GCF)

GCF is the first free online outlet where beginners can start learning Microsoft Access through video tutorials. You don’t have to register to have access to the course, just got to the website and you’re ready to go.

Structure: The course is divided into 6 sections; each section is divided into a group of lessons that covers certain topics in Microsoft Access. The course is structured and organized in an excellent way for beginners.

Interface: The interface is very simple; the lessons are listed under each other, you click on the lesson you’re interested in and you’re ready to go.

Now, the pros and cons:

Pros

1. Free.
2. The course is well structured and organized for beginners.
3. The tutorial is available as both video and text which you can read if you don’t wish to see the video.

Cons

1. The course doesn’t cover the intermediate and advanced topics in Microsoft Access, though that won’t be a problem for any beginner.

Verdict: GCF is the perfect place for any beginner to start learning Microsoft Access.

Microsoft

Microsoft website is the second outlet where beginners can start learning Microsoft Access through video tutorials for free. You don’t need to register to have an access to the course, just go to the website and you’re ready to go.

Structure: The course is divided into 11 sections; each section has a group of lessons and each lesson has its own video that covers certain topics in Microsoft Access. The course covers beginners as well as intermediate topics in Microsoft Access.

Interface: The interface is very simple, you choose the section you want and you’ll be directed to its page where you shall find a list of lesson available, click on the lesson you want and the video tutorial will start.

Now, the pros and cons:

Pros

1. Free.
2. The course is well structured for beginners.
3. The course covers some intermediate topics in Microsoft Access.

Cons

1. The course doesn’t cover Macros, but that won’t be a problem for any beginner.

Verdict: This is a good source to start learning Microsoft Access specially if you want to advance in your studies.

Udemy

Udemy is one of the outlets where you can learn Microsoft Access through video tutorials; you can learn literally anything on Udemy for free or for a fee (depending on the course provider). To join Udemy just register using your email. Go to the search bar and type what you want to learn (Microsoft Access in our case); of course you should choose the free courses and at the time of writing this post the following were present:

You can choose one of these courses and start it. Each course is divided into lessons (depending on the instructor); you can go for the free course entitled “Microsoft Access 2010 Tutorial for Absolute beginners” as it covers more topics than the other courses available. The following are the pros and cons of Udemy.

Pros

1. Free.
2. The course is well-structured for beginners.

Cons

1. The free course only covers the very basics of Microsoft Access, so beginners can’t rely on it as a single source.

Verdict: The course is suitable for anyone who wants to get an overview about Microsoft Access, but not to start using it in doing serious work.

Baycon Group

Baycon Group provides a free online course that beginners can use to start leaning Microsoft Access. You don’t need to register to have access to the course, just go to the website and you’re ready to go.

Structure: The Course is divided into 7 lessons, each lesson covers a certain topic in Microsoft Access, and the tutorial isn’t a video tutorial, it’s a text and photos tutorial.

Interface: The interface is very simple, each lesson is in a page just navigate to the page you want and you shall find the lesson.

Now, the pros and cons:

Pros

1. Free.
2. Covers the basics that any Microsoft Access user should be familiarized with in order to start using Microsoft Access.

Cons

1. The tutorial isn’t a video tutorial so that might be a problem for some; it also covers Microsoft Access 2007 not the latest 2013 version.

Verdict: It’s a good source to start learning Microsoft Access if you don’t like video tutorials.

Bottom Line

The recipe for learning Microsoft Access

1. GCF is the best place for a beginner to start learning Microsoft Access in an easy way.
2. Microsoft is the place for you, if you want to cover the intermediate topics in Microsoft Access.

Remember that the first step is always the toughest step, and the aim of this post is to provide you with resources that will help you take your first step in Microsoft Access.