Tony's Microsoft Access Blog

Access 2007 Demo: Meet the Navigation Pane

Watch this demo to learn about the Navigation Pane in Microsoft Office Access 2007.

Access 2007 Demo: Meet the Navigation Pane

Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization

Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization may help with the delay in switching from Access 2003 to Access 2007.  This software can be some work to setup but basically it virtualizes the app.  Real interesting.  I'll be playing with it sometime.  Real Soon Now - TM Jerry Pournelle, Byte Magazine.

I can't download Google Earth

And I can't figure out how to tell Google that their web page doesn't work.

Visit Download Google Earth 4.2 (beta) for PC, Mac or Linux and click on that Agree and Download button.  For me, as of this writing nothing happens.   Both in IE 7 and Firefox latest version.

Now IE does tell me that there is an "Error on Page" after I click the button.

So how do I tell Google there's a problem?   After a mindless wild goose chase through the About Google >> Contact US I see the following:

You can find up-to-date info for all of our services – from Google Web Search and Gmail to Google AdWords and Google AdSense – by visiting the Google Help page. From there, you can navigate to a specific service's help pages and browse through hundreds of commonly asked questions, find answers in a help group, or send us your comments and suggestions.

So I go to Google Earth Help Centre and look about.  Nothing useful there so maybe the following will help.

Visit the Google Earth Community to share your expertise and experiences.

Oh, I have to register.   Yet another fricking register page.    No thanks.  I've registered at enough useless websites, waited for my emailed confirmation and all that cr*p.   And that page is slow.

Hint:  Why not use a gmail address? 

Google,  you're as bad as Microsoft.  No, you're worse.  Microsoft has comment buttons on the bottom of their web pages.   And I know people look at those.    Google doesn't have any.

I'll try again in a few days or week or two.

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (January 2008)

"The SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) gathers data from Microsoft Windows and SQL Server configuration settings. BPA uses a predefined list of SQL Server 2005 recommendations and best practices to determine if there are potential issues in the database environment."

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (January 2008)

Beautiful and Mysterious Chemical Reactions Create Undulating Brew

This has nothing to do with Access or software development.  It's just very interesting.

Beautiful and Mysterious Chemical Reactions Create Undulating Brew

Applications Referencing the ADOX Library Fail Under Windows Vista

Fellow Access MVP Bill Mosca noticed the following article:  Applications Referencing the ADOX Library Fail Under Windows Vista.

I once tried using ADOX to reset the seed of an autonumber primary key on a table at a clients but it died on some message so I never bothered with it again.   See Resetting AutoNumbers by Allen Browne.   As far as I know this is the only useful thing that ADO does that DAO doesn't when it comes to Jet databases.

Access Next version will still have VBA

Geez, one story that got some details wrong VBA-free Office for Mac debuts, specifically:

"VBA will disappear completely when Office 2007 for Windows is replaced, sometime around 2009."

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Now it's been slashdotted VBA Going Away, Macs Now, PCs Soon with all kinds of lunatic postings.   Un fricking believable how folks will blither on about something that is so wrong.

Let me repeat

Access Next version will still have VBA

P.S.  Keep an eye on the Access Team Blog for official comments.

Installing older versions of Access after newer versions

Every once in a while this comes up in discussion somewhere somewhere.  There is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article or two telling you to ensure you install various versions of Access in chronological order.

Microsoft is wrong.   I've been installing Access in various randomish non chronological order for the last four or five installs. Randomish meaning different as far as I can recall back.  <smile>

I did just that a few days ago after replacing my laptop hard drive and reinstalling the OS and such.  A2007, then A2003, then A2000. I haven't yet done A97 but will soon for the help file if nothing else.   Installing Access 97 will get the License/Hatten font problem of course.

A ten year old backup came in handy today

I got volunteered into building a volunteer database for the 1997 Alberta Summer Games.  (I later made some money off of the database later so my hundreds of hours did turn out to be somewhat profitable. But as I'm halfway through building the database and realized how much work I had left I was a little concerned at the size of the task) 

Eleven years later a similar event in that same city decided they'd like to use the ten and a half year old volunteer list to get some volunteers.  Turns out I had the Access databases on a CDR in my bank safety deposit box.   So I converted to Access 2003, modified a report to suit their needs and sent off the PDF file.   If they need it I can easily create an Excel spread sheet to simplify data importing purposes.

I made the following suggestion to the event manager to quickly figure out many of the folks who are still around or have moved out of the community.

I would suggest that you do the following:

1) Flag the volunteers you already have. 

2) Hand this list out to the executive asking them to strike out those who have moved or those that they know are still in town.   And ignore those that they don't know  

3) However we all know that some executive will take their sweet time going through the list.  Thus at your next executive meeting split this list up into six, or so, ten page chunks.  Hand them out to each second person at your next executive meeting.   Again have the executive mark those who have moved or those that are still in town. While the meeting is in progress and the person doesn't need to spend much time concentrating on the person babbling on have them go through their chunk of the list.  Once they're done have them pass their chunk off to the next person.

(There are two kinds of meetings at Microsoft.   Those meetings in which laptops/tablet PCs are allowed and those where they are banned.  There are very few meetings where they are banned.  The idea being that at any given moment in time only a few people need the exact details that the speaker is pontificating on.  Therefore let the others keep an ear open while they attend to email. Of which they get many.   Thus I figure your executive can time share their attention for such a relatively mindless task as name recognition.)

I did this backup on a 2X Hewlett Packard CDR burner that cost me $600.   It died under warranty 9 months after purchase.   HP sent me a refurbished unit but it did 14 months after purchase.  And as it only had a one year warranty they refused to do anything.  I've never quite forgiven HP for that.  I'm sure I still have the letter I sent to the HP complaint centre somewhere but they didn't do any follow up.

Getting Your "Favorite" <Microsoft Product> Bug Fixed

A very interesting article describing how Microsoft personnel decides which bugs get fixed first.   Getting Your "Favorite" SQL Server Bug Fixed.   This does apply to other products within Microsoft.

Allen Brown, of course, has done a fine job of documenting a number of these "quirks", shall we say, in Access 2003 and older and has had some of those fixed in Access 2007.  He is also tracking bugs in Access 2007.

If you want a bug fixed write something up along the lines suggested and post it to the public Microsoft newsgroups.  This will bring up some discussion for possible work arounds and, if we fellow MVPs feel it is worth while, we'll send it off to the Microsoft Access team.   Be meticulous on your repro steps.

For example there was some recent discussion in the public newsgroups on why The ID field is increment by one every time that you add a field to a new table in Datasheet view in Access 2007 was not fixed in Access 2007 SP1.  Part of this may very well have been that it was too late in the Service Pack cycle to get it fixed.  However Microsoft personnel may also have decided that this particular bug doesn't impact many people and put it at a lower priority than other bugs.  So it might get fixed in SP2.

I may be offline for several days

My laptop hard drive started to fail on me several hours ago.  Bad blocks whenever I run IE.  It may take a day or two to get a new one and installed.   If I can't do a complete system copy, which is likely, it'll take another day to re-install all my software.

Fortuitously I've got a copy of my Access work on another system.   (I was testing an hour or two ago an interesting performance problem on a old, slow laptop of my using the MDB.  <smile>)   My last files backup was two days ago so the most I'll lose is several days worth of emails and newsgroup downloads and postings.

Bill's last day at Microsoft

I admire anyone who can poke fun at themselves.  Bill's last day at Microsoft  Yes, there is a short video ad you have to watch.  You can also find bootleg copies at YouTube.  If they haven't been pulled down by now.

Notice the Microsoft Bob reference that the audience never got. 

These videos that Bill or Steve Ballmer have run at previous MVP Summits or conferences where Bill or Steve or the keynote speakers are a lot of fun to watch.  They do a fine, fine job of mocking themselves.

4 Years on Mars: Rovers Continue to Amaze

Wow.  I'm very, very impressed.   This is incredible.  I want NASA to design and build my next vehicle.  <smile> Spirit though has a lot of dust on its solar panels so it's parked.

4 Years on Mars: Rovers Continue to Amaze

A Happy 4th!

Building spreadsheets the hard way

Colors and Icons

Share your Access 2007 templates

By submitting a template you can show off your creativity, get feedback, and help others be more productive. Submit a Template  (Note that I received an interesting security certificate message when using Firefox.)

Visit the Databases Templates page to see all those available.  Only one community template at the time of this blog entry though, a wedding planner.

The definitive resource is The Rational Guide To Microsoft Office Access 2007 Templates by Zac Woodall, member of the Access development team with Microsoft.

Interested in the internals of the .accdt file?  Rename the .accdt file extension to .zip and poke about.

Added later:  The Access Team published their own blog entry Office Online Community Submitted Database Templates