Welcome To The Access Unlimited Newsletter - Edition 32
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Access Unlimited is an email newsletter that provides free tips, help and information for skilled Microsoft Access users and related software disciplines.


Produced by Garry Robinson (known below as "Ed") from Sydney, Australia.

In this edition,
DEFAULT VALUES FOR COMBO BOXES
DID YOU KNOW ? - SOFTWARE DOES GET TOO OLD FOR MICROSOFT
ACCESS 2002/2000 FORMS DISPLAY PROPERTY BOX
DO NOT OPEN A 97 DATABASE IN ACCESS 2000/XP
LOGGING OF USERS ACTIVITIES IN A DATABASE
MORE COMPETITION - INFORMIX AND IBM
GREAT TIPS FROM READERS
WINDOWS XP CD-ROM RECORDING
FRONTPAGE SPACE SAVING TIP
GOOD READING

--- DEFAULT VALUES FOR COMBO BOXES

Did you know that you can make the first row of data in a combo box, the default value for that combo box?  Open the form that the combo box is on in
design mode and select properties.   Find the default value property and
type the following into the default value.

=[cboCustomer].[ItemData](0)

Please replace the name of your combo box with [cboCustomer].



--- DID YOU KNOW ?

In July on 2003, Windows NT becomes an obsolete product.

In July of 2004, both Windows 98 and Office 98 become obsolete.

In January, 2001 both Windows NT 3.5 and Win 95 went into retirement.

This is significant because it takes a lot of planning to get rid of an operating system or a product like Microsoft Office across a business.  It is also significant because there are now penalties for users if their products are obsolete and they then want to upgrade.  Windows 95 users had to pay full price to upgrade to Windows XP and they also lost all the settings of Windows 95 when they upgraded.

That said, it is perfectly within the rights of end users to continue using Microsoft products beyond their support date.  If you do, you will need to collect knowledge-based information to help support your products and you will certainly need to have a very good handle on where the installation and upgrade CD-ROMs and kits are kept.  You will also need to keep in touch with programmer's etc to ensure that they also are maintaining software to support your important products.

Ed supports Microsoft in this product lifecycle policy as 6 years or so is a
fair time to keep supporting a product in one format.   Ed though does not
believe that full price is fair for upgrades that have become obsolete. After it is this batch of users that are going to spend the most money doing the upgrade and paying full price is not a fair way of maintaining loyalty
amongst customers.   More reading follows

Product Lifecycle
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/discontinue.asp

Windows Products
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H475144F


Visual Basic 6 Will Be Obsolete In 6 Years Time http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/support/vb6.asp



--- ACCESS 2002/2000 FORMS DISPLAY PROPERTY BOX

Have you ever wondered why the property box or the formatting menu turns up when a form goes from design view to normal view?  It is because the Allow Design Changes property is set to "all views" rather than just the "design view".  Open any form in design view and find the Other Tab to view its properties.  You will find the Allow Design Changes property at the bottom of the tab list.

--- DO NOT OPEN A 97 DATABASE IN ACCESS 2000/XP

When you open a 97 database, NEVER say yes to convert or view it as it puts a layer around the database that makes it 2 megabytes bigger.  No amount of compacting will make it smaller.  You will need to export all objects to an empty database to clean up the additional objects added to your database.


--- SYDNEY BASED PROGRAMMERS - GIVE US A CALL

Interested in experienced VB programmers who think .NET is a new tennis game
from Microsoft.   In other words you like VB6.

PLUS

Part-time SQL Server developers who can support development for remote sites.

Contact Garry Robinson access@gr-fx.com


--- LOGGING OF USERS ACTIVITIES IN A DATABASE

One of our clients wanted us to work out which of the 100 reports were being used in their Access database so that they could throw out the redundant
reports and make an upgrade of the software easier.   We did this using the
user-logging module that comes as source code in the latest edition of the Workbench.

This is part of the downloads that come hen you order the Workbench



--- MORE COMPETITION - INFORMIX AND IBM

A while ago IBM purchased Informix.  This has the potential to add very real competition to Oracle and SQL Server.  Ed particularly likes the c-isam version of the Informix data engine as it runs without being tied into the operating system like SQL Server and Oracle.

http://www.developer.ibm.com/data/informix/index.html


--- SEARCHING FILES USING WINDOWS XP

The search engine in Win XP is not very good at finding things inside files, especially Access databases.  This tool will help you out in that regard. Warning though, do not replace anything inside an Access database using this software, as it would corrupt the file.

http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/99_reviews/findreplacefiles.htm

--- GREAT TIPS FROM READERS

May I suggest using the rather nifty site "MakeAShorterLink"?  You can use http://makeashorterlink.com to set up a button on your browser's button bar, which allows you to convert that ugly link from last newsletter.

Readers will now notice makeashorterlink in the URL's in this magazine.

Just installed the FreePDF pgm after a tip-off in WAW. After a bit of a fiddly install, it works very well. You obviously have Acrobat, but for programmers like me, this allows me to create PDF files from any Office app .. Word, Access etc. Just print to the relevant printer, one more click, and Voila - PDF!

http://www.webxd.com/zipguy/freepdf.htm

Interesting point on dates in today's newsletter. I have had a bit of *fun* with dates in the last 12 months. A lot of it appears in this Google thread - http://makeashorterlink.com/?P195224F


--- WINDOWS XP CD-ROM RECORDING

Windows XP has very good CD-ROM recording built into the operating system. Only thing is that there isn't much information about it.  So read more at http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?PR=1&scid=kb;en-us;Q279157

--- FRONTPAGE SPACE SAVING TIP

If you have limited space on for web hosting, consider using an FTP program to upload your Front-Page files. Recently I noted my space usage doubled after using the "Publish to Web" option in front page on a web site that contained a lot of files that were not related to the front page web.

I noted that a '_vti_cnf' directory was created in the non-FrontPage directories the same as the front page ones.

It would appear that in the pre publish phase FrontPage examines and produces a list of files at the web host and compares this list with the Local Front-Page web. It creates these directories and stores a copy of your files. (Thus doubling space usage!)

This should not be a problem if you use FrontPage exclusively, or you have lots of space.

Scott A McManus
www.skandus.com


--- GOOD READING

Scott McManus gives some interesting insights into the trips and traps of Embedded Visual Basic
http://www.skandus.com/tips.htm


.Net and DLL Hell - Why do some companies want to lead the pack  ??? http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/casestudies/csfb/default.asp

All about programming issues with the Outlook security model in Outlook 2002 http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q262701&

Ten ways to make Access more stable http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/security/story/0,2000024985,20264441,00.htm


A critique of VB.net and Visualstudio.net
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S3F5124F

Good collection of programming discussions on Outlook http://www.vbsquare.com/internet/outlook1/

Access L Archives
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/access-l.html

And yet more Outlook
http://www.vbsquare.com/internet/outlook2/

Developer considerations when choosing a file format in Access 2002 http://makeashorterlink.com/?H406234F

Here are a number of links to magazines online

Full Archives
http://www.fawcette.com/archives/

Visual Basic Programmer's Journal http://www.fawcette.com/archives/magazines/vsm/

Java Pro
http://www.fawcette.com/archives/magazines/javapro/

.NET Magazine
http://www.fawcette.com/archives/magazines/dotnetmag/

Visual Studio Magazine (now includes VBPJ and SQL Pro magazines) http://www.fawcette.com/archives/magazines/vsm/

XML Magazine
http://www.fawcette.com/archives/magazines/xmlmag/

Working with MS Access stored procedures in .NET http://www.devcity.net/net/article.aspx?alias=msaccess_sp


Old hard to find notes on Access 97 Upsizing to SQL Server http://www.microsoft.com/accessdev/prodinfo/aut97dat.htm


Download your free acrobat PDF reader from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/alternate.html

A new tool from Microsoft to research data
http://msdn.microsoft.com/dataanalyzer


WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP

For this edition, I decided to develop a table of contents for the 100+ articles at vb123.com.  This now appears in The Toolshed and it also appears online at

http://www.vb123.com/search/toc.htm


Thanks for reading this edition and let me know what you think about the table of contents page.

Garry Robinson


Read the books that we read
---> http://www.vb123.com/books/


Explore your data visually using our popular Access
data mining shareware
---> http://www.vb123.com/graf/


View our web site as a searchable eBook and have access
to all the downloads discussed in the articles and information pages at the popular vb123.com web site.
---> http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/



So thanks for reading our popular newsletter.
Feel free to make comments, copy the email to a friend
or maybe even contribute to the next edition.


Garry Robinson - Software Consultant
 

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Published  2002-05

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