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  Welcome To The Access Unlimited Newsletter - Edition 47
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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, 

View Subform Or Subreport In A New Design Window
Mike Gunderloy Grills Garry On Life  As A Developer
Good Reading

VIEW SUBFORM OR SUBREPORT IN A NEW DESIGN WINDOW

Anyone who developed in Access 97 and then converted the database to Access 2000 would have lamented that the feature that allowed you to view a subform in design mode (double click the subform control) whilst the main form was open in design view was taken away. This really irritated me. Anyway this particularly useful feature was returned to Access 2002 or Access 2003 but in a different guise.  To try it out, Open a form or report in design view and select the subform. Now choose the menu

View ~ Subform In New Window

This opens the sub form in a new window as you would expect. You can also achieve the same outcome by right clicking on the subform control to find the same option in the shortcut menu bar.

STOP PRESS… Garry’s Book

Canadians and others may wish to read this review about my Access book Here
During the month of April, my book received a great review in Smart Access

MIKE GUNDERLOY GRILLS GARRY ON LIFE  AS A DEVELOPER

Mike from Developer Central, Access Developers Handbook and just about every magazine except the Sports Illustrated swimwear edition asked Garry the following few questions during the month

1) So OK, what IS your strategy for enjoying life on the beach as a developer?

2) What payback do you see from publishing a newsletter?

3) Why do you keep working with Access?

4) What's the first computer you ever worked with?

5) Is there still room for a one-man shop to profitably develop and sell products instead of services?

Read Garry’s answers

http://www.vb123.com/Toolbox/04_docs/fivequestions.htm

NEW IN THE WORKBENCH (BETA VERSION)

You can now switch between different executables that will open an Access 2000 or higher database.  This is handy if you run more than one version of Access on the same computer. Garry’s production laptop runs Access 97 thru to 2003 with no real dramas.  You can also now open your backup databases easily.

http://vb123.com/workbench/

GOOD READING

Access Administrators Take Note - Office 2003 Service pack 1 is going to have an interesting tool that will analyze all your databases.

Read More at Microsoft

A quote from this article

“What was the greatest learning from this research?

Sigler: The greatest learning we had by far was customers' surprise at how easy it is to deploy Microsoft Office 2003. Prior to that, there was a tremendous amount of fear around the process. Customers lacked information regarding the number of Microsoft Office Access databases they have in their IT environment and what kind of conversion issues they may run into. They didn't know if they could roll out Access 2003 alongside Microsoft Office 2003 without having to manually configure an individual desktop or database for conversion. In actuality, of the more than 100,000 databases we scanned for varying customers, only 1 percent required manual intervention on the desktop for conversion. Most customers expected that figure to be approximately 75 percent.

Now, the interesting thing is that most of that 1 percent is something we call MDE files. These are compiled, secured databases that cannot be converted. Instead, customers have to find the original MDB -- the source -- and convert that. Of the 1 percent of databases requiring intervention, probably 60 percent or 70 percent were MDE files.

This is something that I mention as a major issue for IT managers to be on the watch out for (in my book).  http://www.vb123.com/map/

Interesting Access Add-In tool. If any readers have any feedback on the product, let me know
www.osagecomputing.com

Using pass through queries
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/msaccess/article.php/10895_3347631_2

Useful page on preventing corruption of Access databases
http://members.iinet.net.au/~allenbrowne/ser-25.html

Using Local Cubes for exploring data
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3350151

A worthwhile MS office security quiz with a very good feedback interface
http://www.office.microsoft.com/assistance/quiz.aspx?AssetID=QZ011127521033

A worthwhile MS Office Computer Security Document
http://www.mmsasia.com/ms/downloads/smartsolutions/Office%202003%20Security%20Enhancements.pdf

and a 30 minute online office security training class by Microsoft
Click here to go to the first page

Rugged notebooks… One of our clients has been enjoying the Panasonic toughbooks in tablet form. They run Access software that we have customized for tablets.
http://www.techworthy.com/Laptop/April2004/Rugged-Notebooks.htm?Page=4

Automatically deploy an Access client
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/msaccess/article.php/3286111

Office 2004 (for the Mac) Read Here

Moving Access tables to a temporary database
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/temptables.htm

Word Mail Merge Walk through
http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/preview.aspx?AssetID=HA010349201033

VB 6 people who are into enums might like this add-in
http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.Asp?ID=6522

Checking SQL Server's Heart Beat
http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,vsp,1,brny,2htd,39gr,amjy

Top 20 Amazon Access book by volume, by rating and by newest
http://www.snap-scan.com/us_bk10_Microsoft+Access_grfxdevelopofmic.html

User defined functions in SQL server
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3348181

XML Schema for Visio Released
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/apr04/04-15XMLSchemaPR.asp

Lessons from SSW -  Improving Access Performance Click Here

SQL Server Security – Net Libraries
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3334851

The Top Sites and Software that will get you into blogging
http://weblogs.about.com/cs/bloghost/tp/topbloghost.htm

Converting ADO Recordsets to XML
http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/041404-1.shtml

A new email spam sends you to a web page with a fake address line that sits on top of your browser
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/14/1084289857949.html

Copy to clipboard - how to do it using VBA
http://www.mvps.org/access/api/api0049.htm

Gathering XML data using Infopath and a mention of Adobe forms beta
http://www.ftponline.com/reports/tech-ed/2004/connolly1/

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

 

WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP

Welcome to Julie and her fellow scribes from Simply Access who have agreed to join the gang of three (Adam, Rick and Ed) in providing relevant newsletter swaps. Have a try of the links directly above to see what the gang members are upto.

During the month of April, vb123.com was approved as a Google Advertising site. This means Google ads that are relevant to a page will appear on vb123.com near the bottom of the LHS of every page. It won’t make us rich because for 47699 page views for the month at vb123.com, we made a grand total of $50 US. Still that is $600 a year if all goes well and it seems relevant to the web site so why not. Got to buy the coffee somehow. For an example, look at the bottom LHS of any page at vb123.com

http://www.vb123.com.au/toolbox/news/issue46.htm
http://www.vb123.com/news/
http://www.vb123.com/Toolbox/02_docs/classyforms.htm
http://www.vb123.com/Toolbox/02_docs/doubleup.htm
http://www.vb123.com/Toolbox/00_docs/subdatasheetsplus.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 Toolbox 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

Chief Unlimited Assistant - Jenni Komarovsky from New Zealand

--- The end of this edition of Access Unlimited ---

PS Don’t forget Garry’s book …

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

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Published  2004-06