All posts by Darragh

This is one little annoying problem that there is not enough obvious documentation for within Ms Access 2007. While it might seem obvious enough, at the time, it wasn’t to me (so who is to blame, my lack of knowledge, the software interface, or the help documentation?).

I was developing a report in Ms Access and setting all these conditional formatting expressions and values. When I was running the reports, the formatting conditions were seemingly not working. I ran my mouse over some of the textboxes, and noticed that the background colour was changing as per my formatting rules when … Read the rest

I’ve been using Access 2007 for about an hour now, quickly developing a small database to store information on what periodicals I’ve been reading for my thesis, and when I have accessed them. Quick review – it is fairly impressive! Highlights are:

• The Ribbon Gui common to all Office 2007 products is used very well in Access 2007
• Graphical Calendar Lookup for Date Fields.
• Split View Forms – Graphical Form at top, Datasheet at the bottom.
• Ability to standardised formatting of controls on a form, meaning left, top, width and height values are consistent for groups of form controls! This

I’d never thought I’d ever say something so geeky but I must comment that I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about downloading a product as I am right now. And right now I’m downloading Ms Access 2007. I’m taking advantage of the http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au offer, and buying the new version of Office 2007 Ultimate for $75. That is a bargain.

I’m presently doing a small bit of consulting work, developing in Access 2003, and have stumbled into a small problem. I have never worked with the Runtime version of Access, and now I’m being requested to deploy my … Read the rest

A quick tip to fix what shouldn’t be a problem!

Occasionally, Access can act rather confusingly. I ran into a typical example early this morning, when I was trying to get Access to allow entry of percentages correctly. I’ve done this about one thousand times before and probably solved this problem one thousand times as well, but every time it happens it causes me to scratch my head (mostly in disbelief).

What happens is this: You set up a field in a table, designate it to be formatted as percentage. Right OK – you go to your form design, set … Read the rest

In the absence of any real content, I’ve decided to post a few Access and VBA related links here. Some are rather general, some are rather specific. Regardless, they’ve been floating around in a text file called ‘useful stuff to look at’ on my computer for a while. So why not share the love?

http://www.vb123.com/toolshed/02_docs/classyforms.htm – Forms as Class Modules
http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/msaccess/msaccess.html – “Not Another Access Page” Albert D. Kallal page on random Access related tips. The section on implementing simple mail merges is recommended.
http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=5010 – Looping through Form Controls.
http://www.fontstuff.com/access/ – Martin Green’s Office Tips. Great section on Access.… Read the rest