Northwind

Perhaps one of the first things you play with when you start to learn about Access is the Northwind database.

Some people have some very strong dislike about Northwind. And you know what? They have very good reasons.

Northwind has a lot of depth by using a lot of different types of objects (queries, etc) and features. That's very helpful when you want to see what's included in the product and wants to test some ideas/code against a rich dataset. However, it's pretty much useless when you want to actually build a database from the ground up. And it's so full of custom code, bells and whistles that it's very hard to even copy something you like to another database.

For example, let's assume you're building a light CRM database to track customer complaints. How do you use Northwind to get you started? Um, you don't.

The good news is that there are a lot of free templates online that you can download from Office's website. In particular, I recommend you take a look at the new free Issues Template. It is a very good starting point for a good number of application people generally build, and changing it to get your CRM app is much more straightforward than Northwind. And did I mention this is all available for free?