Access Unlimited - Edition 10

Welcome To Tips-FX - Edition 10
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Tips-FX is a email newsletter that provides free
tips, help and information for skilled Microsoft
Access users and related software disciplines.

In this edition

ED'S TOP TIP
ED'S FAVORITE SHAREWARE
PREPARING FOR YEAR 2000 - A FEW LATE TIPS
DUELING ACCESS 2000 AND 97
GOOD READING AND USEFUL SITES

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ED'S BEST TIP FOR WINDOWS / MICROSOFT SOFTWARE.

Wherever you are in a Windows program, right click (your
alternative mouse button) and see what options are available.
It may not always be useful but then again you would be
surprised how many people do not take advantage of these
shortcut menus. So tell a colleague just to make sure they
know as well !

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ED'S FAVORITE SHAREWARE PROGRAM

Over the last five years there is one tool that I always
seem to use very regularly and that is a text editor. I write
this newsletter in an editor, replace strings from SQL statements
in an editor and use the editor as a buffer for doing fancy
things with visual basic code. And when it comes to massaging
large text files that have to be imported into a database,
a good editor is essential.

But the one thing that I do find frustrating is when I end up
on a computer where I either have to use Wordpad or Notepad.
I hate to say it but they are basic tools for all sorts of
reasons. The editor I use is called UltraEdit and it can
be found at http://www.ultraedit.com/

It has 3 outstanding features that I really admire. You can
shift columns of text and its keyboard learning sequence
(macros) is a gem. The most important feature is that it
just seems to make life easier. At $30 its a great tool.
But it is highly likely that you have your own favorite text
editor so let me know and I will pass on your comments in
the next edition. Sorry to offend anyone that uses the MS editors.

5 out of 5 stars.

Now is the time to backup all your files. Don't put
it off any longer. I still see sites that do nothing
or rely on partial backups. Here is the usual guide

Buy a tape drive or a hard disk that will backup the lot.
Store tapes offsite.
Test your backup systems by recovering files.

And if you have a database, unload all the tables to text
on a regular basis and make sure they also end up on your
tapes. http://www.gr-fx.com/wizards has such a tool.

For Microsoft Y2K bugs, read the detail in old issues
of Tips-FX and at vb123 dot com

http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/news/issue5.htm
http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/99_reviews/ta2000.htm
http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/99_reviews/intro.htm
http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/news/issue2.htm
http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/news/issue1.htm

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DUELING ACCESS 2000 AND 97

Two of our clients had a real battle getting Access 97 going
on a PC where Office 2000 was installed. Please read the
notes in issue 2 of this newsletter if you are thinking of
upgrading and want to run both versions.

http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/news/issue2.htm

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GOOD READING AND USEFUL SITES

Do you actually do enough reading of technical literature ?
Well make a News Years resolution to read one article
a week on technical software use and development. To help
with your resolve, here are some great articles from
MSDN and officevba that have been published lately.

Microsoft Office Security
http://www.msOfficePRO.com/features/2000/01/vba200001mr_f/vba200001mr_f.asp

Microsoft Office 2000 Mapping Software
http://www.msOfficePRO.com/features/2000/01/vba200001mg_f/vba200001mg_f.asp

And an other mapping tool
http://www.vbashopper.com/components/vba99w40.asp

Want to compare two databases to see what the user has changed.
Try this Visual Basic software that does those comparisons.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/11vbd/vb99k13.htm

Pattern matching in strings. Code for VBScript that shows you
how to find patterns in text and youyou will probably learn things
that will shed some light on search engines
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/09vbd/vb99i1.htm

Create Your Own Popup Button Controls in any Office Product. Or
some interesting reading for those who just don't know when to stop
improving the user interface of their application.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/11mov/button.htm

An Article On Replication In Access 2000
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/11mov/replicat.htm

Building E-Commerce Solutions With MAPI Controls
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/11ivb/ecommerce.htm

Searching through sub folders using the File System Object (VB)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/10ivb/recursive.htm

Speeding up ADO in VB - Worth a read for client server developers
And what about the worlds longest web page reference !!!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/06ivb/insidevisualbasic-usingtheadogetrowsmethodforfasterdataretrieval.htm

What has improved in the Access 2000 Relationship Manager
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/12mo/revamp.htm

Frontpage 2000 has made some good improvements in HTML.
Read all about it. Ed agrees, Frontpage 2000 is worth the upgrade
as long as you don't upset your client relationships.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/11mo/o2k99b4.htm

Find the end of the week from a date. Access programmers take note !
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/09imo/date.htm

For more on these date handling routines, download the Access
free neatcode database as explained at
http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/99/freestuff.htm

An ASP article on importing delimited text files.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/periodic/period99/09asd/import.htm

And a book on Microsoft Jet online.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/isapi/msdnlib.idc?theURL=/library/books/dnjet/c1_body.htm

To check for more articles, click the TOC icon at the top of the
MSDN html page. This brings up a tree view menu.

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LAST EDITION
http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/news/issue9.htm

PREVIOUS GOOD READING LINKS
http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/news/read99.htm

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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 1999-12