Response to project Huron has been really positive--we have quite a few people signed up for the beta. It seems people have an interest in storing data in the cloud. Here are some additional video demos and resources: Liam's PDC talk Huron – Access Desktop Database Sharing Huron – Making changes in SQL Data Services data hub and synchronizing to Access shared desktops Huron – Enabling custom database support The early adopter program is aimed to begin in the next 1-2 months. If you are interested...

Today's guest writer is Neha Monga, Access PM in charge of the runtime. The Access runtime is a valuable part of Access - Developers can distribute their rich Access solutions to users without requiring a full installation of Access. In the Office 2007 release, we offered the runtime available for free and we have seen tremendous download volume.  We are excited that many of you are using it and want to better understand your experience with it from both feature and distribution perspective...

The video Watch this: Highlight values on a report by using conditional formatting is now live on Office Online. Enjoy! Edited: October 31, 2008--updated link with correct URL.

Today’s guest writer is Liam Cavanagh from the Sync Framework and SQL Services team. They are doing some cool stuff that allows Access developers to store their app and data in the cloud using SQL Server Data Services. Liam is looking for people that want to beta test an upcoming release early next year. --Clint Today at PDC we are announcing Codename “Huron”, a set of synchronization experiences built on top of the sync functionality in SQL Data Services’ cloud database and...

Last week some super smart ladies on the Access Program Management team wanted to learn more about Access users and what fuels their passion for the product. The discussion reminded me about a marketing class I attended on value propositions . The instructor presented the underlying foundation for any value proposition -- functional, economic and emotional messages. A functional value proposition is good: Access makes it easy to create databases with forms and reports. A economic value proposition...

Peter's Software has recently released a free utility for printing labels . Here is how they describe it: Label Saver is a freeware MS Access module that will allow your users to specify a label printing start position and a number of copies of each label to print. Using Label Saver means you don't have to throw out that half-used sheet of labels. Just continue printing from the next available label!

The Access team wants to learn more about who reads our blog, perceptions of Access in your organization, and what new features people would find valuable. We would appreciate it if you help us out by taking this short 12 question survey . Thanks

Update 10/16/2008: We have now closed submissions for the 2007 SP2 Beta. A big thanks to all the folks that signed up! We are planning the release of Office 2007 SP2 in the first half of calendar year 2009. The beta is expected to be available in the October/November 2008 timeframe. We have the opportunity to give a select group of customers access to the Beta once it’s ready. If you use Access 2007 heavily this is your chance to get involved early and help us find bugs that may affect your...

Interested in a sneak peak at our next version of Access? We are holding a developer kitchen on the Redmond Campus, November 10-13, 2008. This conference will focus on building Access 14 applications using our latest builds. We are looking for Access developers to share with us early feedback on the product before the Beta release. What is a dev kitchen? This conference is designed for a small number of invited guests to spend four days with our Redmond team. On Day 1, Program Management will reveal...

The Access team is looking to make improvements to the form design experience by helping users get started building powerful and interesting forms. Most Access professionals have a set of forms that they re-use quite a bit. What we are interested in specifically is how these common forms are laid out. There are obviously re-used patterns that you are using in terms of how you layout controls to provide your customers with a compelling experience; we’d love to see examples of them. Ask yourself the...