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About The Editor
Garry Robinson
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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,
Access setup logging
UK Access User Group Conference
Viewing Contents of a Text Box in a Zoom Field
Did you know this about VBA?
Jet Virus Wreaks a Little Havoc
How to Customize the MS-DOS Command Window
Bumper good reading links once
again
Feature Article - Find Out About (and log) Users Access Setup
In this edition of Access Unlimited, I would like to draw you attention to an
article that I wrote for the October edition of Smart Access.
In this article I show you how to find out what service pack of Access, jet
version and sandbox mode that your users are running. You can also log the
location of the database that they are using. Once you have that information, it
will be logged into a database so that you can review it later. You will be amazed
what people are running at different sites. We had at 6 different versions of
the Jet Engine at one site.
Click here
to read the full article at Smart Access
UK Access User Group Conference
http://www.ukaug.co.uk/
The UK Access User Group is
running its annual conference on 10th November. This will include
a presentation from Clint Covington, the team leader of the Access
development team. Clint will be beamed in from Microsoft’s HQ in Seattle. The
agenda for the conference is ...
Clint will be providing a sneak preview of the next version of our favourite
database product and will be providing an insight into Microsoft’s vision for
the next version after that. Will we still have Jet? Will Access still use mdb
files or will we be moving closer to SQL Server? When will .NET be embraced from
within Microsoft Office?
In addition Mark Whitehorn, author of Inside Relational Databases and database
columnist for PCW magazine, will be looking at how database technologies might
evolve over the next five to ten years.
Other speakers include Jerry Legg who will be providing a master class on the
subject of user interface design for Access applications and Andy Couch who will
be discussing how to leverage the power of SQL Server from an Access
application.
Read More at
http://www.ukaug.co.uk/
** Some lucky attendees will be able to win some of the
software from vb123.com just for turning up. Second prize will be a 100cm plasma
TV (only kidding).
Read about
the new Office 2006 interface here
Viewing Contents of a Text Box in a Zoom Field
Here is a way to make text more visible. In design mode of form, find the text box that you want to expand. Now set up a double click event in the text box and type in the following two lines of code.
On Error Resume Next
RunCommand acCmdZoomBox
Did You Know This About VBA?
Have a look at the following line of code (like "Ed" used to code in Fortran 20 years ago), and decide what data type the three VBA variables are.
Dim I, J, K as integer
If you thought they were all integer, then you are wrong. Only the last variable "K" is integer, the other two will actually be compiled as the slower and larger Variant.
Jet Virus Wreaks a Little Havoc
Interestingly there was a bit of argie bargie lately about some
flaw in the Jet Engine that would allow a virus to take charge of your computer
from an Access database (embedded in an email). Not that I expect this type of
virus to take over the world, it is a potent reminder that the anti-virus
warnings and macro signing technology that was introduced in Access 2003 may yet
have its day in the sun.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1865523,00.asp
Editorial: What would be really great would be if Microsoft
released a new version of jet to fix this and made it a mandatory security
upgrade. That way every time I go into a smaller business running Access 2003, I
wouldn't have to download Service Pack 8 just to get rid of the silly
warning messages that appear when you are running service pack 7 of Jet 4 with
macro protection set to medium. Got that one of my chest.
More on this here
How to Customize the MS-DOS Command Window
Did you know that you can
customize the appearance of the Dos command window to make it easier to read? It's not obvious, since there are no
menus at the top of the window, but if you right click in the title bar, you'll
see several selections.
To change the size of the command window for just the current window, do this:
Open the MS-DOS window the quick way by typing cmd into the Windows Run box ie
Press Windows Start button ~ Run
Type Cmd into the dialog box
Right click the title bar and select Properties.
Click the layout tab.
In the Window Size section, set the desired width and height (in pixels)
GOOD READING
Some monster service packs for Office 2003
Read here http://www.kbalertz.com/Feedback_887616.aspx
or
read about some problems at
Woody's Office
Watch. Alan Cossey from the UK Users Group has already said that he was
forced to download the complete 100megabigbytes to get it working.
Go to the Office Online
Downloads site and click Check for Updates to get the latest Office
updates for your computer
Apress, Publishers of
my book
on Access security now have a good book search for all their books.
http://superindex.apress.com
Page on Windows XP Security
http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/security/page_1.htm
New Google desktop search includes Outlook Calendar, Contacts and Tasks and an
Optional Sidebar (see
Picture). The searching interface now shows the
results instantly (see
Picture) There is also an internal Outlook search that has a nice clean
interface.
http://desktop.google.com/
Displaying XML RSS feeds in a better way
http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/100505-1.shtml
Access 2003 Help Bug: You receive an "Unable to open <URL>" error message when you try to
access the Office Online Web site in an Office 2003 program
http://www.kbAlertz.com/redir.aspx?kbs=194066
Kids Programming Language (well smart 9 year olds I guess)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/coding4fun/coolapplications/KPL/default.aspx?print=true#
FileMaker Pro on the move again
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/biztools/article.php/3530996%20
Download a free chapter from a book on database projects in VB.Net. (Remember to
disable your popup add blocker to download it).
http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2005_10/magazine/columns/aspnet/
Woodies Office Watch have a sample picture of the User Interface for Office 2006/12
http://office-watch.com/office/Office%2012%20UI%20with%20callouts.jpg
Data Binding with ASP.NET 2.0 by Smart Access editor in chief, Peter Vogel
http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2005_10/magazine/columns/aspnet/
Service pack for Replication Engine of Access XP (Sorry don't know much about
it)
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;321076&spid=914&sid=global#4
A review of the progress Microsoft has made with its security
http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2005_10/magazine/features/pvarhol/
Microsoft releases a disk based backup system for servers
http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=6944
A page on Access Jet SQL
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnacc2k/html/acintsql.asp
Find out about Unicode compression in Access tables.
Click to read
A page of .Net resources that you can use from your vb6 application. What
interested me was the article on Encryption/Zip compression.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/vbfusion/default.aspx
Rules for better results in the all important Google Search Engine.
http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulesToBetterGoogleRankings.aspx
"TOP" Clause in SQL Server 2005
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3532226
Setting up a Windows Service in .Net
http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2005_02/magazine/columns/gettingstarted/
Create an RSS feed for your website
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_fp2003_ta/html/OfficeFrontPageCreateRSS.asp
A good book chapter on Outlook programming covering events such as
Starting Outlook
Sending an item
Receiving new mail
Creating or modifying items or folders
Switching to a different folder or to a different view
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnolbk02/html/odc_ch11olevents.asp
Preview: The Future of Visual Basic
The first preview of the next version of Visual Basic in the The Visual Basic Team's blog. She provides an
overview of language features exposed in this release, and tells you where to
download bits.
How to determine whether your workbook contains links to external data in Excel
2002 and Excel 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330383
A good selection of Windows API's
http://www.mentalis.org/tips/alltips.shtml
--------------------------------------
If you like this newsletter, why not try
The Buzz Newsletter from FMS
http://www.fmsinc.com/
Superior Software for Windows Newsletter
Access, SQL Server and .NET Downloads
http://www.ssw.com.au
Rick Dobson’s Web Site for Access Programmers
http://www.programmingmsaccess.com
Helen Feddema - Book Author and Editor of Woody’s Access Watch
http://www.helenfeddema.com/
UK Access User Group
http://www.ukaug.co.uk/
WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP
In this editorial, I thought I would share some feedback from
readers with you.
Pivot Table In Excel -> Call me stupid but I was looking at a pivot report in Excel the other day and
for the life of me I could not find the actual data that was used to create the
pivot table. Sure I could bring up the pivot table wizard and change where
things were going but none of the help or options would actually describe where
the data came from. Eventually it twigged, the Excel Pivot table wizard opened on
page 3 of the wizard. If you clicked on the back button, the data source was
there for all to see. As most wizards start on page one, I never thought of
going backwards as I have never gone forward. I hope your readers can use this
information someday so they don't waste as much time as I did. Fred from
the UK.
Remote Queries -> Your web article at
http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/02_accvb/remotequeries.htm
is EXACTLY what I was looking for, and fit perfectly into what I am trying to
accomplish myself. (***) I am an Access developer/VBA programmer, with over 12
years experience, and recently wrote an Access database with over 10,000 lines
of code, 103 queries, 49 forms, 33 local tables, and 2 macros in a pear tree.
And I still didn't know how write queries that remotely access another database.
And now I do. You are correct when you state how we can amaze ourselves as we
stumble across hidden features. Bless you. You have great mojo indeed !
(***) I adopted your explanation of remote queries and have developed Delete
queries, which work as well as Select queries do.
Your fellow programmer
Frank
User Logging -> I've been using your advice from your article in the Sept. 05 Smart Access newsletter, and figured that it was time to also take advantage of your Workbench tool! When combined with your recommendations in your Access security book (as to logging what users do once they are in a database), overall an elegant and easily implemented solution! Thanks for sharing your wisdom and development efforts! John
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. And if you can, have a look at our software by using the Marketing section on the left hand side of this newsletter. If you really like this newsletter, why not purchase The Toolshed and you will get all the other newsletters and plenty more in a developer’s knowledge base tool with super searching facilities.
Garry Robinson - Software Consultant and Author
--- The end of this edition of Access Unlimited ---
PS Don’t forget the Workbench … http://www.vb123.com/workbench/
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Published 2005-10