I’m currently researching ways to move my main MS Access application from a simple local network client/backend setup to a global, multiple remote sites configuration using SQL Server. One of the challenges is to upsize the current MS Access accdb backend database to SQL Server 2008. If you try it from Access itself using the... » read more
(__Updated Wednesday 30JAN2009.__) Developing applications that manipulate OpenOffice documents has always been rather tricky; not very difficult, but just tricky to get right. With OpenOffice 3, things got trickier and applications that used to work will now fail. I’ve just spend nearly a day trying to get a mail-merge application I built to work again... » read more
There are times when the coexistence of 64 and 32 bit code on the same machine can cause all sorts of seemingly strange issues. One of them just occurred to me while trying to run the [ASPx demos][dxdemo] from [Developer Express][dx], my main provider of .Net components (the best supplier I’ve ever been able to... » read more
My trusty old gigantic [Sony Vaio][vaio] is about 4 years old. It served me well and still works but it’s about to become my main development machine for the next couple of months and I can’t afford to have it die on me during that time. It was time to get something as gigantic and... » read more
Years ago I did a [small utility][cad2svg] to convert [DWG][DWG] or [DXF][DXF] files into a vector-graphic, zoomable, [SVG][SVG] preview. The Linux command-line utility was used in a larger drawing management application that I had built before I left that company for greener pastures. The Linux server-based application would scan the vast (100,000s of [CAD drawings][CAD])... » read more
Access programming is inherently single-threaded. That’s usually OK as most operations are sequential anyway and it keeps things simple at the programming level. There are times though where the lack of ability to run code on another thread is sorely missing: anything that takes a long time to run will just freeze the application, making... » read more
This project provides a custom and enhanced message box replacement for the default `MsgBox`found in Access. A Test database containing all the code for Access 2007/2010/2013 is available at the bottom of this post. (__UPDATED Saturday 21OCT2014 to VERSION 1.10.__) ###What’s wrong with the default MsgBox### The default message box in Access is sometimes useful... » read more
In my previous article about changing the MS Access colour scheme I had the need to allow the user to restart the database after the colour scheme was changed. (__Article and Code Updated 13FEB2009.__) Being able to cleanly restart and compact the application is also useful in other instances: * Changes made to the environment... » read more
Microsoft Office 2007/2010 comes with 3 colour (color) schemes. Users can easily change it but when you deploy an Access application under the [Runtime][runtime] your users have no way to set the colour scheme as the application’s options are not available. (__Article and Code Updated 01DEC2014.__) Luckily for us, the global colour scheme setting in... » read more
Microsoft Access Team made an interesting post and a follow-up on how to add a transparent layer that cover the screen to focus the attention of the user to a login form or other important popup window. The trick is to use some WIN 32 API calls to modify the transparency of a standard MS... » read more