Welcome To The Access Unlimited Newsletter - Edition 43
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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, 

Garry’s MS Access Protection And Security Book
Free Backup Book Chapter
Installing Access/Office 2003
Ms Word Protection and Recovery Tips
Google Tips
Upgrades to the Workbench
Good Reading - Another Bumper Edition

GARRY’S MS ACCESS PROTECTION AND SECURITY BOOK

My book is finally in print and available at good book stores all round the world.  If you want to find out more about the book, what people have been saying, read the table of contents and the free book chapter, head to the following address (the book is for Access 97 users onwards)

http://www.vb123.com/map/

ALL YOU EVER NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT ACCESS BACKUPS – FREE

If you think that backing up your Access database is just a matter of sticking a tape in tape drive, have I got some free information for you. As part of the process of marketing my new book, Apress, the publishers, allow a chapter from the book to be published in PDF format. This way you can find out about how great the book is and hopefully buy it. More interesting though for you guys is that you can get your hands on one of the best/only complete reference on how to backup tables, objects and full databases. Importantly though you will find out how to recover your database objects and tables and even how to work out if your database is actually free of users and ready for backups. The information is applicable to IT Managers, DBA’s and Developers. Enjoy !!!

http://www.vb123.com/map/

SIMPLE BACKUPS

Now that you have read the free book chapter and even if you haven’t, would you like to have a really simple way of backing up your database properly. Well now you can with the Access workbench. Click on the following page to find out more or read more about the latest features in the workbench further on in this newsletter.

http://vb123.com/workbench/

INSTALLING ACCESS/OFFICE 2003

As some readers will be heading off to purchase the latest versions of Access and Office to fill your Xmas stockings, or should I say Bill’s Xmas stocking, I have put together a page that shows you how to make sure that you still have a version of Access 2002 / 2000 / 97 on your machine at the end of the installation process.

http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/03_access/install.htm

I know that you will want a little commentary from me as to how useful 2003 is. Well at the moment I am struggling to work out why Microsoft would bother to rush out a version so soon after Office 2002. In reality Microsoft probably only spent a year working on software and a further 8 months debugging and getting their marketing message across. Off course there are some great new features, especially in Outlook 2003 whose spam filters are pretty successful and hardly seem to need any input at all. There are also some neat new views on emails like unread messages, big messages and follow up flags that work across any folder. In Access 2003 there are some improvements to (You guessed it) XML, a backup facility and now you can link to SharePoint table which will be really interesting for a database that will be used on the road. Missing from improvements list is anything for Access Projects. If this was meant to be the future of Access, this is worrying development. Another glaring omission for mine was linked tables to SQL Server. Those of you wanting to use JET Access for talking to SQL Server will regret the fact that they have to plod on with ODBC linked tables.

The real downers in 2003 for mine are the Macro Security enhancements because they will confuse my clients no end and the new interface for help that requires you to be hooked up to the web to find some help pages. In Australia, we get charged for additional downloads on a lot of ISP plans and the fact that you would need to have retrieve a Table of Contents from the web instead of your hard drive is going to cost both money and time.

If you want to read about what Microsoft had to say about Access 2003
http://accessadvisor.net/doc/11854

Personally, it would seem like it would have been better if it was Office 2004 from what I have seen but if you are languishing with version 97, remember that almost all support from Microsoft will disappear from mid 2004. This could include all the relevant online help, downloads and patches.

Other interesting things from the upgrade

After installing Outlook 2003, I could never get Outlook 2002 to work again.

If you want to use Word 2002 with Outlook 2003 as your default email editor, you are out of luck. If you wanted to do mail merge with Word 2002 and Outlook 2003 you are also out of luck. You must upgrade to Word 2003 as well. There were some other painful issues that cropped up to do with sharing versions but these seem to have gone away now.

MS WORD PROTECTION AND RECOVERY TIPS

In Woody’s Office Watch edition 8.45, Woody wrote a piece on an article written by Frank Rice, the technical editor from my book.

TOP TIP: REMOVING PERSONAL INFO FROM WORD DOCUMENTS

I (Woody) bumped into an article on MSDN that was posted more than a year ago, which contains some very solid, no-bull advice about viewing and removing hidden data in Word 2002 documents.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnword2k2/html/odc_ProtectWord.asp

Frank Rice wrote the article, and he deserves a raise. (Yes, you can quote me on that, too.) Frank doesn't claim to have discovered all of the places personal information gets stuck into your documents. But he's found all of the ones I know about. Good article. Well worth perusing.

MS Word autorecovery

I (Ed) was working in Word the other day and the computer had a blue screen and shut down. I started the computer about five hours later and the Word file that I had been happily editing was in a state where there were at least three Auto recovery options. Yes I picked the wrong one and overwrote the latest incarnation. Yep, you guessed it, 2 hours work down the drain. I then had a look in the recycle bin and there was an *.ASD with all my latest typing in it. I didn’t manage to get the auto recovery working again properly but I did find all the text that I had typed. So not quite so angry J

MORE GOOGLE TIPS 

Leonard Mednick, a reader of this magazine writes

Hi Garry,  In your 10/30/2003 (excellent) newsletter with subject title you tell us how to use google for dictionary definitions. Now you may have already heard what i'm about to say but here goes anyway. Google has 20 or 30 keywords,one of which is "define". and if you do your search like so:

define: csv

you'll get world-class definitions form several websites. i've been using "define" for a couple of months now and frankly, i don't know how i got along without it.

bonus -- you can get definitions to phrases as well. try:

define: web services

Naturally I think that using the "define" word works so much better than simply plopping that word into the Google bar without it. Don't you? <smile>

Good stuff Leonard. More Google help here…

http://www.google.com.au/help/features.html

MANAGING JUNK MAIL

The junk email still flows in. I personally manage the 300 or so pieces of rubbish that flood into my leaky boat using a product called Mailwasher. It saves me a couple of hours a week and keeps viruses at harms length from my Outlook inbox.

Read about and download MailWasher here

THE WORKBENCH UPGRADES

Due to popular demand, the latest version of the Workbench includes a backup on demand capability that works whenever everyone leaves the database. The new feature list includes
·          A new installation program so that you can better use the Workbench in Windows Explorer

·          A very simple backup process that works in the same way as the compact check box. This will ensure that you backup your database when no one is using the database. It is also handy for developers for performing backups in between editing sessions.

·          An enhancement to the favorites interface that allow you to specify a target size for the database. Once your database exceeds that size, the compact check box will be selected for you and the database will be compacted next time everyone leaves the database.

To find out about backups, head to

http://www.vb123.com/workbench/help/backup.htm

To find out about the new enhancements and download the latest version, head to

http://vb123.com/workbench/

Free Workbench: If you purchase Garry's Microsoft Access database protection and security book, the registration number and download location for the popular 1.3.4 version is included free with the book. This isn’t the latest version but it will allow you to monitor users, stop users connecting to the database and allow you to easily  open the correct version of Access.

UPDATED TOOLSHED

A new version has been released with new items like using forms as class modules, Access security, taking orders by email and all the latest newsletters.

http://vb123.com/Toolshed/

GOOD READING

Find out about storing hashed passwords instead of text http://www.aspnetpro.com/art.asp?id=385

Tony Toews Access Tips
http://www.microsoft.com/office/previous/xp/columns/column05.asp

The introduction page to lots of free magazine articles at MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/technologyinfo/columns/default.aspx

Some Access wizards
http://www.acc-technology.com/   

FAQs on doing emails with Access
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/email.htm

Good Q&A on the dbo_ prefix that you get when linking to a SQLServer database using ODBC in Access
http://beta.experts-exchange.com/Databases/MS_Access/Q_20688967.html

Lots of Access tutorials
http://www.fgcu.edu/support/office2000/access/

Danny Lesandrini, Smart Access contributing editor shares some reporting tricks for Access
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/msaccess/article.php/3104211

Creating Access Wizards - Explanations at Microsoft
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/modcore/html/deovraccesswizards.asp  

Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office
Click Here

Read about having an open LDB file
http://www.tek-tips.com/gfaqs.cfm/spid/705/sfid/1955

Download MSDE 2000 Release A with the "Slammer" worm fixes and other security bits pre-applied. Click here

Relinking Access tables in code
http://www.mvps.org/access/tables/tbl0009.htm

The LDB viewer
http://www.microsoft.com/accessdev/articles/jetlund.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/accessdev/articles/jetlund.htm#Decipher

and How to Read .LDB Files
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q186304&

Access 2000 too slow
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/a2kslow.htm

Very good data recovery check list
http://www.datarevive.com/repair.htm

and

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q283849&

Registry API Functions
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;145679

Open a browse to folder dialog in VB rather than browse to file dialog
http://www.developer.com/net/vb/article.php/1541831

http://www.mvps.org/access/api/api0002.htm

How to edit Office document properties from VB without using Automation.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=224351

Jet Upsize Tool White Paper
http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q294/4/07.asp&NoWebContent=1

Interesting page on network performance issues for Access. Especially the note on anti-virus scanners on network drives.
http://www.classicresystems.com/network_performance.htm

Macro Security In Access 2003
Click here

If you like this newsletter, why not try the websites of others who contribute to this newsletter.
http://www.vb123.com/explore/links.htm

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.

WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP

Funny thing I just thought about. I was approached, organized and wrote the whole book and never spoke to anyone. It was all arranged and managed by email. Is that weird or what!

As this will be my last ezine before Christmas, have a good one everyone.

Garry Robinson - Software Consultant and Author
GR-FX Pty Limited
Sydney, Australia.
Ph +61 2 9665 2871 Fax +61 2 9665 8448
Software Resources http://vb123.com/

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Published  2003-12 

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