How to Do an Access Database for Church Membership
By Bonnie Conrad
If you are in charge of keeping the membership rolls for the church you attend, you want to make sure those membership rolls are accurate and up to date. Creating an Access database containing the current membership records of your church is one of the best ways to automate this time-consuming process. Once you enter the information, maintaining those membership records is as easy as looking up each member and making the appropriate changes to their address, telephone number or membership status.
Create a list of fields you want to include in your database. A typical list of church members might include first name, last name, street address, city, state, ZIP code, the year the member joined the church and a unique membership ID. Try to avoid including information that could be misused, like Social Security numbers. Instead of listing each member's Social Security number, assign each member a unique membership ID before designing the database.
Decide which field you want to use for your primary key. The primary key is a field that is included in every record, and which is unique to every record. The membership ID you create could serve as the primary key.
Gather all of the information on the membership of your church. You need to enter this information once the database tables and data-entry forms are complete.
Open Microsoft Access and open a new database. Go to the tables section and create a new table. Enter the names of the fields you have identified in the previous steps. It is best to use short, one-word titles for each field.
Go to the "forms" section of the database and open the form wizard. You can use the form wizard to create a data entry form based on the table you just created. The fields in the data entry form follow the fields in the underlying table, and when you enter the membership data into the form it is saved into the table.
Writer Bio
Based in Pennsylvania, Bonnie Conrad has been working as a professional freelance writer since 2003. Her work can be seen on Credit Factor, Constant Content and a number of other websites. Conrad also works full-time as a computer technician and loves to write about a number of technician topics. She studied computer technology and business administration at Harrisburg Area Community College.