There are many ways to build useful apps to run your business with Access 2013. You can download an app via the Office Store, build an app using a Web App Template, or create a Custom Web App. You also have the ability to make a desktop database, just like you always have in Access. Each method offers a fast and easy way to get started. Several members of the Access team explain more in a video.

In Access 2013, we've made a lot of changes so that you can quickly make a great user interface for your web databases. First, Access 2013 will automatically generate useful views based on your data. Second, you'll be able to use special controls for dealing with related data—the related items control and the autocomplete control. With this interface, the people who use your app will have easy time entering data. Erik Kennedy, a Program Manager on Access explains in a video.

Access 2013 web apps feature a new, deep integration with SQL Server and SQL Azure. In Access 2010, when you created a web application on SharePoint, the tables in your database were stored as SharePoint lists on the site that housed the application. When you use Access 2013 to create a web app on SharePoint, Access Services will create a SQL Server or SQL Azure database that houses all of your Access objects. This new architecture increases performance and scalability; it also opens up new opportunities for SQL developers to extend and work with the data in Access apps.

Automating the relinking of tables just makes good sense. This is especially true if you are distributing your database to others. It can save you a lot of headaches, trouble, travel, and time. You do not have to be physically present, nor do you need to remotely access another computer. Additionally, you do not have to enter the names of your back end database(s) or your linked tables.

In this post, guest blogger Patrick Wood shows you how you can call a single procedure using just a little code to automatically relink your back-end tables, even when the database files have been moved to a different folder. The procedure will also relink the tables in multiple back-ends. And best of all, you don't have to know much about writing code to make this work.

You can use Access 2013 and the Office 365 Preview to build a web app almost immediately and start using it to track the things you care about. There's no need to set up expensive or complicated servers, but you can still take advantage of the speed, security and simplicity that comes with server-based apps. Follow these steps to get started in minutes.

The Access team is proud to introduce the Access 2013 public preview, which will make it easier than ever for everyday people to organize the data in their lives and businesses using Access apps. This release focuses on bringing Access databases to the web through Office 365. We've made lots of improvements to help you build professional apps more quickly than ever. In addition, your data is now stored in a full-fledged SQL Server database for speed, reliability, and extensibility.

You fire up Access and load your favorite app only to see its performance drag like molasses in winter. Access MVP Juan Soto and founder of IT Impact, Inc. shares five performance tips that will tune up your database.  

Queries are a fundamental part of any database: among other things, they are the way you ask questions about your data. If you think of a query as a question, query criteria are your way of making the question as specific as possible. So a question like "What are my contacts' birthdays?" can be more like "Whose birthdays are coming up next month?"

A well designed database stores data in a normalized format with dates defined in a field so that new data is simply added as additional records. However, people want to see data with dates grouped by columns. This can be done by using a crosstab query. However, when creating reports based on crosstab queries, we need to control the specific column names that are returned by the query. Otherwise, the report cannot refer to the query's fields.

Here's a neat trick that you can use to filter a Continuous or Split form while your users are typing in a Combo Box. As the user types, the form filter updates to display full or partial matches for the value entered.

This example uses a slightly modified version of the Northwind 2007 Template, available for download from Microsoft. The "Customer List" form is a Split form that displays a list of all customers. We want to allow users to filter this list to easily find a customer, even without knowing the full customer name.