Changes at FreeAccess

I have finally registered the aadconsulting.com domain, and the FreeAccess site will be progressively renovated to reflect this.

The first change is this newsletter, which has been renamed and revamped. The content will remain essentially the same.

The url's - freeaccess.cjb.net and aadconsulting.cjb.net still work.

Office 2003

The Office 11 Marketing Beta was officially unveiled last Monday, with the final product to ship this Northern summer.

What's new with "Access 11"? an on-line article by Bill Ramos, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft Access and Excel

Office 2003: Should you upgrade? from ZDNet

Keep a Developer's Journal

A recent article on builders.com recommended that developer's keep a journal. One of the benefit's described was that with a detailed history of a project, "days, weeks, or months later, you'll be able to recall why you implemented a feature one way rather than another. Source code comments describe the end solution, but the journal describes every step you took to get there." Read the Article

The FreeAccess Access Control Center amongst many other features allows you to do just that for your Access projects. Try The Beta

Access KB Browser Article References Updated

A further 69 articles references, mostly for Access 2000, have been added, for a total of 2,166 articles. Download the updated database from http://www.aadconsulting.com/kbbrswer.html

The new articles are also listed in the New KB Articles section of the newsletter.

Create a Default Control In Design View, set the default for a form or report control by displaying the Properties dialog box. Click the Toolbox button for the control. The Caption of the Properties Dialog will change to "Default for [Control Type]". Change the control attributes as required. Get more tips, samples, articles and code from the FreeAccess Access Utilities CD Check for Run Time Access Function IsRunTime() As Boolean ___Dim varReturn As Variant ___'Returns True (-1) if a run-time version of Access is running ___varReturn = SysCmd(acSysCmdRuntime) ___IsRunTime = varReturn End Function VBA Tips Use Early Binding When using object variables, wherever possible, declare the actual type of object instead of the generic Object variable to take advantage of the performance gains provided by early binding. For example, Dim frm as Form instead of Dim frm As Object. Use For Each... Next When going through object collections, using For Each.. Next is much faster than using For... Next. Using For Each.. Next, VBA needs to locate the address of the object variable only once, at the beginning of the loop, while For... Next de-references the object variable in the body of the loop on each iteration. Use the Nz function to convert null to zero In this example from the Access97 Help file, the NZ function converts a null value to zero, and the optional argument provides the string to be returned if varFreight is Null: ___varResult = Nz(varFreight, "No Freight Charge") Search for Nz Function in Access Help for more information. Get the Description for an Error Number Use the AccessError method of the Application. object to return the descriptive string associated with an Access or DAO error: ___strstrErrorString = AccessError(lngError) Using Access 2000/2002 Help We all know how useless the Help Files are in Access 2000/2002. For example, typing AccessError in the Index tab of Access97 Help brings up AccessMethod. But try the same search in Access2000/2002, and you can't even type AccessMethod in the Index tab, and the Answer Wizard returns [Please rephrase your question] :( I use this workaround. Open the Object Browser. Make sure <All Libraries> is selected in the top combobox. Enter your search string in the second combobox and hit <Enter>. The keyword will be highlighted in the appropriate section of the Browser. Hit F1 to open the Help file entry for that keyword :)___s Dialog Shortcuts Select a folder in the Open or Save As dialog box (File menu) (to select the folder list; arrow keys to select a folder) ALT+0 Choose toolbar button in Open or Save As dialog box (File menu) ALT+ number 1 is the leftmoist, 2 the next, and so on Update files visible in the Open or Save As dialog box (File menu) F5 Switch to next tab CTL+TAB or CTL+PageDown Switch to the previous tab CTL+SHIFT +TAB or CTL+PageUp Perform the action assigned to the default button ENTER

Third party Add-On Tools Access

Find Out if a Windows Application is Open

Enter the following code in a new module: Option Compare Database Option Explicit 'Use the API function FindWindow to determine whether an application is already running. 'Useful for OLE automation. Declare Function FindWindow Lib "user32" Alias " FindWindowA" _ (ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal lpWindowName As String) As Long 'Custom Declare statement that uses the FindWindow API call 'to find a window of the specified class. 'Pass a long NULL pointer for the window name. Declare Function FindWindowByClass Lib "user32" Alias "FindWindowA" _ (ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal lpWindowName As Long) As Long 'Class names for some common applications: 'Access: OMain 'Excel: XLMAIN 'Word: OpusApp 'PowerPoint: PP97FrameClass 'Visual Basic: ThunderForm 'Binder: BinderFrame 'Visio: VisioA Dim mblnRetVal As Boolean 'Example: find Word. Public Function fnFindMSWord() As Integer ___Dim lngRetVal As Long ___Dim strMSG As String ___lngRetVal = FindWindowByClass("OpusApp", 0&) ___If lngRetVal <> 0 Then ' Word already open ______fnFindMSWord = True ___Else ' Word not open ______fnFindMSWord = False End If End Function

Is Database Security an Oxymoron?
Strong encryption alone doesn't provide database security. An interesting on-line article from Access guru, Mary Chipman.

Access Links For Developers
TechiWarehouse - Home

Free Help Authoring and Documentation Writing Tools

KeyWorks Software

Office Developers Only Office FAQs

Baarns Consulting Microsoft Office Resource Center

ACG Soft - MS Access Developer Tools

vbAccelerator Icon and Cursor Library

LangaList Home Page

• A new version of the SmartForm Wizard that will create a lightweight form with zero code behind it, intelligent navigation buttons, and a standardised global code module.

•  XML Explorer Add-In Explore XML documents with this Access Add-In As XML documents are structured as trees of data., with this tool  you can did down into XML data using a Windows Explorer like interface.

• An Access add-in that will significantly improve on the Access Edit SQL Window.

• A new version of the Access Control Center