Access JumpStart 2.0 | Blog
A Rapid Development Framework for Microsoft Access
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Cost and Price for custom written software
In the consideration of charging customers for custom software you are writing for them there are different terms here that sometimes get used interchangeably. I'm going to define them for this article as two very distinct and separate things and will do so in terms...
Access VBA isn’t always the quickest thing out there…
Don't get me wrong. Access VBA can perform very well in most situations. There have been a few times where I've needed to improve the speed of some function I was using and Access just took too long. One of those is hashing values for files. There is a hashing...
Versioning to the rescue
I use an SVN server to store versioning information for all my Access work that I do. A shout out to the OASISsvn Access Add In and TortoiseSVN for Windows which are two pieces of software I use daily in my Access versioning work. How it saved by butt today: I had a...
VBA conversions – implicit and explicit
Sometimes you can get runtime errors when you are trying to assign the value of a control to some VBA object. For example, consider this statement: TempVars!NewTempVar = Form_orders.order_id What we are trying to do is set the NewTempVar in the TempVars system...
Can you make a living with Microsoft Access?
The resounding answer to this is "Yes". BUT - what if you can't seem to make it work? There are actually a number of ways to monetize your Access skills: Offering your services as an Access Application developer to create, modify, and/or maintain Access databases.Many...
Troubleshooting an ODBC error in Access
Access Error (3155) ODBC: "Query timeout expired". It happened when trying to insert a new record into a linked table called "order" I'm using ODBC driver 17 in this case and it happened twice. Not sure if the user tried to do it twice or if my code kept going and...
Understanding Access Events Can Be Tricky
Yesterday, I was talking about the BeforeUpdate form event and BeforeUpdate Access control event as ways I was looking at triggering a validation function and then canceling the event so the update would not occur. A reader wrote in to mention usage of the Change...
Good candidates for Access projects
Maybe you read my last message (Hammers and nails, Access and…? | Access JumpStart) and thought, "Yeah, Access does sound like a good fit for my business needs." But what would you use it for exactly? If you've never used Access or any relational database software,...
Simple Active / Inactive Access Combo Box Dropdown List
I was working with a friend yesterday and he was showing me how he was showing a bound dropdown list on a combo box on a bound form. He was using a UNION query and VBA to update the combo box RowSource value each time to include another row in the dropdown if the...
We aren’t good project time estimators
This is one reason why I don't like giving time estimates to customers. You know the drill: Customer: So how long is it going to take you to do X? Me: Uh, when do you want it? Customer: Yesterday. Me: Not that fast... how about on Friday? My decision for Friday is...
Making sure your validation bases are covered
It's easy to get burned when trying to set up custom validations for Access fields and enforcing them while the form is being filled out. I have a form with the following fields (of the type): Vendor Name (string) Is Vendor Active (checkbox) Is On PO form (checkbox)...
Hammers and nails, Access and…?
It's important to choose the right tool for the right job. What about Microsoft Access? When is it the best or at least a good tool for the job? Or turning around the question, what are the best jobs to use Access for? The first thing to remember is that Access is a...

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