MS Access for the Business Environment: Create a PivotChart View in Access

This article continues the series, MS Access for the Business Environment. The primary focus of this series is an examination of business uses for the MS Access relational database management system. The series is designed to provide guidance in the practical application of data and database concepts to meet specific needs in the business world. While the majority of the procedures I demonstrate will be undertaken with Access 2002, many of the concepts that we expose in the series will apply to numerous versions of MS Access.

For more information on the series, as well as the hardware / software requirements to prepare for the tutorials we will undertake, please see Tutorial 1: Create a Calculated Field with the Expression Builder.

Introduction to this Tutorial

This tutorial will introduce the PivotChart in MS Access. As we discovered in our last lesson, Create a PivotTable View in Access, of several enhancements that appear in Access 2002, exciting new presentation functionality is offered by the addition of PivotTable and PivotChart views for the tables and queries of the database. PivotTables and PivotCharts provide a means of interactive data analysis, thus broadening our business intelligence toolset in Access; both allow us to organize and summarize information into useful analysis presentations called views.

In this tutorial, we will focus upon the creation and use of PivotChart views in Access. This lesson will include:

• Creation of a basic query upon which to base a PivotTable view;
• Creation of a PivotTable view in an Access database;
• A brief introduction to PivotChart views, including various features;
• Creation of a PivotChart view, based upon the PivotTable view we have created for this purpose;
• An examination of the navigation and modification of a PivotChart View;
• A brief discussion of formatting features.

Let's begin by introducing the PivotChart view. Then, having an idea of the "end destination," we will look at the steps required to create a PivotChart view to meet a hypothetical business need.