This is the third post in my short three-part series on ribbon customizations in Access. In the previous post, I showed how you could fill a dropdown with a list of the open forms in the database. This time, we'll fill a dynamicMenu control in a ribbon customization with a list of open objects of any type. This might be useful to let users switch between open objects in an application. Again, we'll start with the XML for customization: < customUI xmlns =" http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006...

I just ran across this little video from a how-to on MSDN in which Joel Krist shows how to get Access 2007 to prompt before committing a record update using VBA.

In the previous post, I showed you how to create a simple customization to close the currently open object. Continuing along the lines of adding object helpers to an application, we'll add two dropdown lists to a customization to work with forms. The first will list all forms in a database and the second will list the open forms in an application. Start with the XML for the customization. For readability, I've left out the button created in the previous post. < customUI xmlns ="http://schemas...

In a previous post, I talked about how much I enjoy developing solutions that use the new Office Fluent Ribbon UI. Along those lines, this post is the first of three upcoming posts on some specific customizations I've used in some applications recently. The general scenario is a ribbon customization to help users work with objects in an application. This first post is pretty straight-forward where we'll create a button to close the currently open object. Start with the XML for the customization:...

We received a question from a reader named Eric week before last about how to write a Count(Distinct) query in Access. In other database applications such as SQL Server, Oracle, and MySQL, the Count(Distinct) aggregate is used to count the number of unique items in a given rowset. For example, consider a table on SQL Server named tblColors, such as: Color Value Red 5 Green 2 Blue 8 Orange 1 Red 8 Green 6 Blue 2 To get a count of the number of unique colors in the table, you could write a query such...

Subdatasheets were added to Access 2000 but here's a tip to both add functionality to them and make them look pretty cool. This works in Access 2000 as well but can be a little hard to find. (Read: I just found out you could do this.) A subdatasheet is a table, query, or form in datasheet view that can show child records in a nested datasheet for a given row. For example, consider the classic example of customers, orders and order details. A subdatasheet showing this data might look something like...

Mor Hezi, the Access product manager, is giving a web cast targeted an at new users Thursday September 13, @ 9:00 AM pacific time. This is a great opportunity to introduce Access to co-workers that want to learn more about how to track information. Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tracking Your Information Is Easier Than You Think with Access 2007 (Level 100) Discover how to easily put structure to your information and start tracking it more efficiently with Microsoft Office Access 2007. Whether...

We're headed into our second coding milestone for the next release of Office (v.14). The stuff we're building is really amazing, and I can't wait until I'll be able to talk with you all about it in detail. For now though, as we ramp up for our next coding milestone, I'm going to have my hands pretty full getting our final designs in place. The upshot is that my post frequency is going to slow a bit. Please keep the feedback rolling in, I love to hear how things are going with your 2007 adoption and...

This is the next installment in a series of posts about Access 2007 originally made by one of our developers on the Access team on his own blog that I'm moving here for the broader audience to enjoy. "I find color schemes that I just like and that just feel right" - Alan Bean Figure 1: Access 2007 Color Picker In Access 2007, we have changed the color picker control from that old 80s looking control to a 21st century color picker. This new color picker is now consistent across all of Access, and...

This is the first installment in a series of posts about Access 2007 originally made by one of our developers on the Access team on his own blog that I'm moving here for the broader audience to enjoy. Up until this point, Access has supported command buttons with text or a picture, but never both at the same time. This has been a long standing request from users: the capability of showing both the caption and the picture. In Access 2007, you will notice a new property off of the command button called...