Rob Cooper recently made a post, Adding Attachments from a Folder, which shows how to add a single attachment file per row. But what if you wanted to add more than one file? One (highly contrived) scenario would be to add all of the files in a folder to one row, and do so recursively if requested, similar to Rob's example. What follows is some VBA code to do this, which borrows a bit from Rob's post and a bit from one of my earlier posts. However, I should point out this (again, highly contrived scenario) is meant only as an example and not something I would recommend doing, because if you are adding more than just a few files you can (ok, WILL) bloat your database very quickly, and in doing so can negatively impact performance and potentially hit the two gigabyte file size limit very quickly (see Access 2007 Specifications for details on database file size and object limitations). ...

Last week I asked about what naming conventions you use. As a follow up for our international readers—what conventions do you adopt? Do you use the english prefixes or are there standards specific to a language? We are curious…

Garry Robinson’s latest article for Database Journal is great look at some of the new 2007 features as well as being helpful is addressing a key user need, performance. He shows how you can use macros, TempVar’s and some VBA to profile your application.

Someone asked us yesterday how to add all of the .jpg files from a folder into an Attachment field in a table. In this case, the individual wanted to add one attachment into a new record in the table. This could be pretty useful, so we thought we would post it more broadly. This code accepts parameters for the folder name, table name containing the attachment, the name of the attachment field, and two optional arguments. The first optional argument is a pattern that can be used when searching a directory...

Susan Harkins has a great post on Tech Republic 10+ reasons why IT pros hate Microsoft Access (but really shouldn’t) . Before joining MSFT I spent 6 years building Access applications professionally so many of the items ring true for me. No other software has so effectively found the niche between end user and full fledged developer. I never cared much about the cool factor, being thought of as "professional" or my applications being "ready for the enterprise". Instead Access...

Learn to think relationally by Allen Browne is now available. Great advice for our non-developer audience. “As your database application grows, do you find yourself adding multiple Yes/No columns to existing tables? If so, you might not be using the relational features of Access to their fullest. This article describes a better way of storing related data: creating a many-to-many relationship.”

We are looking at ways to make our templates better starting points for developers. Some common developer feedback we get about the templates and Northwind in general has been to use naming conventions. For forms and code there seems to be three good options: RVBA Naming Conventions Leszynski naming convention Microsoft Consulting Services Naming Conventions for Visual Basic Object Hungarian Notation Naming Conventions for VB There was a less information about conventions for database schema. Here...

We are thinking about building a light weight bug tracking database to give away as a free template. I’m curious—what systems do you use in your application development to track bugs and upcoming work items? If you currently don’t have a system— email us if you would be interested in beta testing our template.

Found this nice review about Access 2007 the other day… “GCN Lab review: The options are endless — and the learning curve is, too — but with Access, you get more bang for the buck than with any other program of its kind. Access has a reputation for being, well, inaccessible. But with the 2007 version, this seems true only if you’re working on an advanced schema or using advanced features. One of the best ways to get started with the program quickly is to use one of the included database templates...

I got the following email from Peter’s Software: Los Angeles, CA For Release July 28, 2008 - Adding to its growing suite of Microsoft Access developer tools, Peter's Software announces the release of VelociForm v1.0. VelociForm is an add-on for Microsoft Access that provides the ability to instantly and dynamically display an add/change/delete/search form based on any table or query definition, or SQL statement. Intended as an alternative to creating a separate form for each miscellaneous table,...