Someone sent us a question the other day about one of my favorite dark corners in Access and we thought it might be interesting to dive into this area a little. Microsoft Access SQL supports two uses of the IN keyword. The most commonly used case is as part of the WHERE clause of a SQL statement to provide a list of values used as criteria. Using the Customers table in the Northwind 2007 sample database as an example, this might look something like: SELECT [ First Name], [ Last Name], [ State /Province...

Access MVP Garry Robinson and editor of vb123.com recently wrote a nice review article on IBDE Ribbon Creator . You all should find it enlightening. http://www.databasejournal.com/features/msaccess/article.php/3803996/Making-Your-Own-Access-2007-Ribbon.htm

There is a new article on MSDN that has some useful code samples. This was based off a post by Kerry Westphal on the Access blog a while back. Here is the intro: Many Web 2.0 applications are designed to make it easy to visualize complex data. I found myself recently challenged with this task while working on a project where I wanted to display on a report to show the time elapsed between the current date and another date. Some example scenarios could include how much time has elapsed since a user...

I got this request from a customer who is trying to analyze their environment as it pertains to Access and  Excel files: Can we use WSH and VBScript to get this type of basic information out of files in an automated fashion? Both MS Access and Excel have a well defined object model i.e. it should be easy to write a script that opens the file, queries the various collection objects, and dumps the contents (e.g. Table Names in Access, Pivot Table objects in excel, Data source names in either etc...

The team recently eclipsed 10 million downloads of Access 2007 templates. Quite frequently I hear from template users  about the need to change the application to match their business process. Additionally, I hear from people about the need to build a new database to solve a emerging business problem. Here is the most recent example: I'm looking to create a database where my inventory can be tracked via a scanner. I want each model to have its own specific barcode that can be scanned in upon...

There is a pretty good directory available with links to team blogs at Microsoft. Enjoy!

in mid December an Excel security fix (MS08-074) broke paste from Excel inside Access. Users would get the following error message: The data on the Clipboard is damaged, so Microsoft Office Access can't paste it. There may be an error in the Clipboard, or there may not be enough free memory. Try the operation again. There is a hot fix now available that will fix the issue. Luke Chung has written about how you can work around the issue if you don’t have permissions to install the hot fix.

Luke Chung from FMS recently talked on Channel 9 about his view of Access solutions -- where they fit well, what challenges users and developers often face in creating and maintaining them, and how they have evolved from standalone desktop solutions to having the capability to be integrated with web-based and SharePoint centric solutions. He further explains primary reasons why some Access database solutions are migrated to SQL Server database based solutions, what different approaches are used to...

Mike Alexander (Excel MVP) recently sent me a very cool trick that I hadn’t seen before. He uses some simple hackery and trickery to get data bars in a query. This is the first installment of a long series about how Access can be used to create cool dashboards. You can see more free training videos from Mike at his web site . Thanks for sharing Mike.

There is an interesting article on about Office 14 on Cnet. It doesn’t have anything specific about Access but there is a good interview with Antoine Leblond, who leads the Office client engineering efforts.