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Books for Microsoft Access 2007 and earlier

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I was going to do a list of my favorite Access books…but Erik Rucker already posted one. His blog, “What’s new in Access 2007” has been going since late 2005. Erik is the program manager for Access 12.0 (aka 2007) at Microsoft. I expect when the runtime is announced it will appear here first. (To paraphrase the late-nite tele-marketing shill..”Programmers Are Standing By!)

Erik’s annotation consists only of the publisher’s blurb, not any kind of comments or review. Several of the books have publishing dates for April and later.

My own favorite books, which cover Access 2003 include:

Grover Park George On Access This book is especially good for those with limited database experience. GPG is a regular on the Utter Access forum, and even answers eMail questions.

Fixing Access Annoyances I wrote about this book previously, it is full of workarounds to pesky problems in Access 2003 and earlier.

Access Hacks

Microsoft Access Data Analysis

Finally, the other day I picked up VBA for Dummies, hoping for a little more detail about Visual Basic for Applications, the version of BASIC which is used when programming the Microsoft Office programs. The 5th edition actually deals with Office 2007, (i.e. The Ribbon), and I found several good tips.

VBA works for Outlook, Word and Excel, too, of course, and is especially helpful when you want to glue the applications together, by sending eMail from Access for example or using Word to create reports from Access.

Simulate Access 2007 runtime

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Clint Covington has a hint to allow us to get a preview of what a project will look like when running under the Access 2007 runtime:

I know, the runtime hasn’t shipped yet. If you are looking for a simple way to share a database with co-workers and you don’t want them messing around with things… Try renaming the file to ACCDR. This is the equivalent of running the database with the /runtime switch. Basically the ribbon and nav pane get turned off.

I found a comment on a German blog quoting somebody who was quoting somebody that the runtime would ship “sometime in the March timeframe”. Let’s hope so.

Chron This Week

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In a commentary this week, Pablo Eisenberg discusses the escalation of non-profit executive salaries, and frankly, even if it doesn’t sound quite like Enron, I would have thought he was talking about excessive executive compensation in for-profit businesses.

To facilitate, and possibly at times to disguise, the large increases for their CEO compensation packages, nonprofit boards have increasingly resorted to payments beyond direct salaries: deferred compensation, bonuses, housing allowances, and other benefits. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that of the 304 nonprofit groups that provided data for 2005, 40 gave their chief executives bonuses as part of their compensation packages, many them worth at least $50,000.

In a discussion of 2006 returns from fundraising, online fundraising was helpful for large charities.

Online donations grew for most other charities last year by healthy margins. Although figures for the Salvation Army’s year-end Red Kettle drive are not yet available, the online version brought in $482,317—a 256-percent increase from 2005.

Upcoming Grantsmanship Training In Boston

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Just received the following from tcgi – I attended this training several years ago, and the cost has paid for itself many times over.

The Grantsmanship Center’s signature Grantsmanship Training Program is coming to Boston, Massachusetts, March 19-23, 2007. The program will be hosted by Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD).

The Grantsmanship Training Program covers all aspects of researching grants, writing grant proposals and negotiating with funding sources. More than 100,000 nonprofit and government personnel have attended this comprehensive 5-day workshop, which now includes a full year of valuable membership services.

During the workshop, participants learn The Grantsmanship Center’s proposal writing format, the most widely used in the world. In addition to practicing the most advanced techniques for pursuing government, foundation, and corporate grants, they develop real grant proposals for their own agencies.

Upon completion of the training, participants receive free follow-up, including professional proposal review, access to The Grantsmanship Center’s exclusive online funding databases, and an array of other benefits.

Tuition for the Grantsmanship Training Program is $875 ($825 for each additional registrant from the same organization).

To ensure personalized attention, class size is limited to 30 participants. To register online, to learn about scholarship opportunities for qualifying organizations, or for more information, visit http://tgci.com/gtptraining.shtml. Or call The Grantsmanship Center’s Registrar at (800) 421-9512.

The Grantsmanship Center
PO Box 17220
1125 West 6th Street, 5th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017
(213) 482-9860
FAX (213) 482-9863
http://www.tgci.com

Access 2007 Runtime

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Well, I wish I was pointing to the Access 2007 runtime, but I’m not, however, this Microsoft page, discusses several points of interest:

  1. The runtime will be available “shortly after the release to the general public of Microsoft Office Access 2007
  2. The runtime and developer extensions will be free downloads.
  3. The Extensions will include a packaging wizard, similar to the one for 2003, which optionally includes the runtime files, and any other files, necessary to create an MSI
  4. The Developer Extensions will include hooks for Source Code Control
  5. The Extensions will not include the Property Scanner or Customer Startup Wizard that were previously available in earlier versions.
  6. Links to the download locations will be posted on Office Online and the Access Developer Portal on MSDN.

SQL Command Box for Microsoft Access

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Among the many things I miss in Access from Foxpro is the ability to enter SQL statements on-the-fly into the command box. So, as a first cut, I created a form with a textbox and a button. The textbox holds the SQL code, and a button that calls a subroutine to stuff the code into a scratch query defined in the .MDB Queries collection.

There are lots of possible refinements, error checking, parsing of other commands, etc, but already I’m taken with this as it eliminates half the clicking around when doing SQL queries. Thanks to Martin Green’s Office tips for most of the code. Here is the VBA code for the command button. 

Private Sub cmdExecute_Click()
' The following code processes an on-the-fly SQL command
' entered in the text box. The command requires a "scratch"
' query be included in the database query collection. The code
' takes the SQL string, passes it to the scratch query, and
' then executes it.
' Code cribbed from Martin Green's Office Tips at
' http://www.fontstuff.com

Dim strSQL As String
Dim db As DAO.Database
Dim qdf As DAO.QueryDef

strSQL = Trim(Me.txtQuery.value)

'Here is the code which will apply the SQL statement to the query:

Set db = CurrentDb
Set qdf = db.QueryDefs("qryScratch")
qdf.SQL = strSQL
Set qdf = Nothing
Set db = Nothing

DoCmd.OpenQuery "qryScratch"
End Sub

Look and Stuff in Microsoft Access

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I think any database analyst or programmer has heard this common client request when doing mailing lists:

I want to be able to look up the organization data if the person is a member of an organization, and copy all of the relevant information into my mailing list. But I also want to be able to type in (or over) any existing organization information. And if the person isn’t a member of an organization, or if the organization doesn’t exist in the table, then I want to be able to add it right then…

So we stand in really odd positions to make this work, trying to relate the person table to an organization table and put together some kind of logic that works like QuickBooks (which no doubt cost $2.45 million to develop…)

This recently came up again, and because it turns out that the Organzation table gets replaced periodically, I gave up on the idea of relating the two tables, and just decided to duplicate the organization’s fields in the person table. So shoot me.

If you press the “Look and Stuff” button, it brings up a subform which contains a single control, a combo-box pick list which picks an organization from the organization table.

The code behind this takes the field contents for the chosen Organization record and copies them to equivalent fields in the person table. The code: 


Private Sub cmdFill_Click()
On Error GoTo Err_cmdFill_Click
Dim dbs As DAO.Database
Dim strSQL As String
Dim rstTemp As Recordset
Set dbs = CurrentDb

'Only do the following if the user has chosen a company 
If Me.cboCompany.Value > 0 Then
   strSQL = _
     "Select * FROM Company Where Company_id =" & Me.cboCompany.Value
   Set rstTemp = _
      CurrentDb.OpenRecordset(strSQL, dbOpenDynaset, dbReadOnly)

   'Stuff the results into the Mailing List Form
   Form_Maillist.txtOrganization = rstTemp![Organization]
   Form_Maillist.txtAddress = rstTemp![Address]
   Form_Maillist.txtCity = rstTemp![City]
   Form_Maillist.txtZip = rstTemp![Zip]
   Form_Maillist.txtState = rstTemp![State]

End If
'Close the chooser form    
DoCmd.Close
Exit_cmdFill_Click:
    Exit Sub
Err_cmdFill_Click:
    MsgBox Err.Description
    Resume Exit_cmdFill_Click  
End Sub

One Book: Fixing Microsoft Access Anoyances

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If I was allowed only one book about Microsoft Access, This is the one, Fixing Access Annoyances by Phil Michell and Evan Callahan. Just their discussion about Access’ workgroup security is worth the price of the book. They cover mostly Access 2000-2003, with a few notes regarding Access 97. The book includes a fair amount of VBA code, which can also be downloaded from their web site.

The book covers a lot of ground and includes internet resources. One of the best of these remains the community web site, UtterAccess.