When you use code to refer to Excel (and other programs as well) you need to be careful not to use any code that does not refer back to the instantiated application object. If you do so then you will find that Access instantiates another Excel (or other program) object which is not visible to…
Hardware Recommendations For Running Access
Hardware matters. Invest in a faster PC and your Microsoft Access databases will run faster. Be alert for sellers packaging fast processors with minimal memory and a slow hard drive to keep prices low. Look at all aspects of the purchase when database speed is a priority. A faster hard drive is worth the investment…
Enable and Disable a Form Control using VBA
I was working on a design for an Order Management Database, and one of the tasks I dealt with involved dynamically Enabling or Disabling one of the form’s Command Buttons’ using VBA. This gave me the idea for the present Access tip. The command button was located on a Customer Details form which had an Orders…
Use controls, not fields
Sometimes we need to use fields from a RecordSource that aren’t shown on the form. It is legal to reference them directly even if they don’t have a control. For example, we can have a form bound to a RecordSource like so: And only display in a textbox but not show the . In code,…
Minimizing stateful code
First we need to define what a state is. A state means that the object has variable(s) that may cause it to behave differently, depending on the content of the variables. As an example, the Forms collection is stateful: This is legal code and will compile but we can’t be assured that this will work…
Use properties instead of constant or magic numbers
A common programming mistake is to hard-code literals that corresponds to some property. That is particularly true with certain controls like tab controls & pages. The tab control exposes a property that indicates the current tab and the pages contains a property that indicates its position in the tabs of the control. Thus, it’s common…
Access 2003 Technical Articles
In this section of the MSDN Library, you’ll find technical articles that demonstrate how to build and deploy complex Access 2003 runtime-based solutions, automate Access from another application; use the new XML features in Access 2003, and even how you can animate Access 2003. You can use the TOC to your left to navigate through…
ID vs Code
There are cases where a table’s primary key is referred to often in the code. In fact, it might have some special meanings in code. It is highly encouraged to avoid the use of or (or any auto-incrementing schema) for those keys because it is also usually desirable to create a VBA that corresponds to…