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Power Tips

• Dealing with the “ambiguous outer joins” message

  2 Jul 2009

  Today’s guest blogger is Colin Wilcox, writer for Access Training on Office Online. When you query multiple tables for data, you sometimes see a message about “ambiguous outer joins.” The message tells you to create a separate query that performs one of the joins, and then include that first query in...
• Users love fast apps

  1 Jul 2009

  There is a good article that recaps the recent O’Reilly Velocity 2009 conference on web performance and operations. I particularly liked this quote: Phil Dixon, from Shopzilla , had the most takeaway statistics about the impact of performance on the bottom line. A year-long performance redesign resulted...
• Case-Sensitive string comparisons

  26 Jun 2009

  Today’s guest blogger is Michael Groh, co-author of the popular Access 2007 Bible . The VBA language is not, by default, case-sensitive. A statement such as   CBool("XYZ" = "xyz") will always return True. You might come across this issue in cases such as the following: If strOne...
• Smart Access has a new home

  22 Jun 2009

  Today’s guest writer is Garry Robinson, Access MVP and proud new owner of past Smart Access journals. I asked him to tell the community about the new home for Smart Access. Hello Clint and Microsoft Access lovers, I am happy to announce that my company has purchased the exclusive rights to Smart Access...
• Create custom menus and shortcut menus by using macros

  18 Jun 2009

  About a month ago, we posted a Power Tip from Edwin Blancovitch about creating shortcut menus by using VBA . However, if for some reason you’re not interested in cracking open the Visual Basic Editor, there is a way to create shortcut menus (the menus that appear when you right-click an object) just...
• Handling the SQL Server bigint data type in Access 2007 using ADO

  10 Jun 2009

  Today’s guest blogger is Vinny Malanga. Vinny is the CTO of IMI Software, Inc. , which specializes in software development for the property management industry. I recently received a call from a client asking for help on how to use the SQL Server bigint data type in a disconnected Access .accdb file...
• Counting the days…

  10 Jun 2009

  Sal Ricciardi of the Access Developer Documentation team has produced a couple of articles for MSDN that address two commonly-asked date-related questions about Access: Using Excel Date Functions in Access 2007 shows how to use Excel’s NETWORKDAYS function from within Access. Counting the Number of Working...
• Sample Class Eases Creation of Similar Forms

  5 Jun 2009

  Last week Joel Graff shared his story on how he used Access to track salt usage for the Illinois Department of Transportation. Some of you wanted to know more about the custom class that he uses to ease the creation of similar forms. Joel has agreed to share a sample implementation of his custom class...
• New Access training courses on Office Online

  3 Jun 2009

  Access Training writer Colin Wilcox has just finished up a series of query courses, available for free on the Access 2007 training courses page on Office Online. Here’s the whole set: Find answers with queries Course What you'll learn Queries I: Get started with queries An overview of what queries are...
• Fast-Fast-Fast Compact and Repair of Large Databases!

  1 Jun 2009

  Today’s guest blogger is Michael Groh, co-author of the popular Access 2007 Bible . I think it's safe to say that anyone who's worked with really large Access databases (like, in excess of 50 or 100 megabytes) has encountered slow compact and repair cycles. My favorite anecdote in this regard is a very...
• VBA values for Office theme colors

  26 May 2009

  Recently, there was a thread on UtterAccess that I thought might be helpful to more people. The poster radish asks: I'd like to change the color of a control then be able to change it back to its original color. If I wanted to use the theme's highlight color, e.g., how would I do that in code? It's listed...
• How to: Create a Shortcut Menu for a Form, Form Control, or Report

  21 May 2009

  Today’s guest blogger is Edwin Blancovitch. Edwin is president of Advanced Developers.net , creators of Easy Payroll , a software package to manage your human resources, payroll, scheduling, time and attendance needs. When you're designing a form or report, you may want to provide a method for...
• Fill a list with date values that update automatically

  19 May 2009

  Say you need a combo box that is always populated with the last day of the current month, as well as the last days next five months. For example, in May, you want it to look like this: Then, in June, you want the choices to automatically roll over so that the first date is 6/30/2009, and the last one...
• Creating Combo Boxes in Access 2007 that Allow Users to Select N/A

  12 May 2009

  Ken Getz has authored another Visual How-to adapted from the Access Cookbook . This one’s about creating combo boxes that allow the user to specify a null, or “not applicable” value . Here’s the overview: Sometimes Access developers must create applications that require users to specify a value from...
• Showing hidden controls during development

  7 May 2009

  Today’s guest blogger is Michael Groh, co-author of the popular Access 2007 Bible . I often use hidden controls on Access forms and reports to hold intermediate values, temporary "flag" values, and the like. Because these controls are invisible at runtime, it's useful to set their colors to...
• Running other applications from Access 2007

  2 May 2009

  I just noticed a new article from Ken Getz about running applications from Access on MSDN. This was adapted from his Access Cookbook. Here is the intro: Sometimes, from within your Microsoft Office Access 2007 application, you need to run another application or batch file that requires some time to do...
• A simple debugging tip

  1 May 2009

  Today’s guest blogger is Michael Groh, co-author of the popular Access 2007 Bible . Most of us, when faced with a failure in a large procedure, resort to the usual techniques for discovering the cause of the bug. The scenario here is that you've got some good VBA error handling in the procedure, and...
• Free Tool to Clear Test Data From Your Database

  29 Apr 2009

  Access MVP Bob Larson has released a utility that you can use to clear test data from your database. I’ll let Bob tell you about it: It is a “database reset tool” which is for anyone who has been developing a database and they’ve got test data in it and want to get it prepped for release.  It allows...
• A Simple Solution for Pluralizing Strings

  23 Apr 2009

  Reader Patrick Jackman of Vancouver, BC has submitted a useful “fit-and-finish” tip. Here is a simple tip that I use quite often in MsgBox prompts when the message involves reporting the results of a count. Function Pluralize(ByVal varCount As Variant, Optional Singular _                    ...
• Write your own Help

  23 Apr 2009

  Sure, that sounds like the frustrated outburst of an overworked technical writer, but when you build Access applications for others to use, you're pretty much on the hook to write the Help for them. Last month, we featured the “ How to synchronize combo boxes " template, and commenter Shairal was...