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A Rapid Development Framework for Microsoft Access
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Productivity Check-In: What’s Worth My Time (and What Isn’t)?
I was thinking today about productivity. Not in the abstract, but in the “what am I actually wasting time on?” kind of way. You know the drill—those little things that pile up and eat away at your day before you even realize it. One of the big ones for me is time...
A Reusable Recipe for Importing and Exporting Text Files in Access
Today I extended a class based file conversion tool. I have different text files and need to be able to import a particular text file and export it into a new format, basically doing different transformations to the line items. I did some work in the past on this for...
Navigating Multi-Page Subreports in Access—Without Losing Your Place
Subform navigation systems on a form can get a little tricky at times. I am currently working on a Subform / Subreport control on a form that lists all the shipment records for a single job in order of the shipping date and time. Because the customer wanted a numeric...
Why you’ll always have a job as an Access developer
Don't be afraid to refactor something if it's getting too complicated. One of my customers often will have new ideas for reports or forms in the Access app that would really help him make his business better and his life easier. Many times these ideas will bend and...
A Day in The Life
Ever wonder what a developer running a sole proprietorship does? Here's a little snapshot of my life this week. This week i've been up to a couple of things: I've updated a client to provide a button to their navigation to open a particular query. Continued to work on...
TransferSpreadsheet Not Cutting It? I Use This VBA Routine Instead
A few years ago I wrote a routine to copy an Access query or table to a block of Excel cells because I was having issues with DoCmd.TransferSpreadsheet not being able to always do what I needed. I found that copying the entire recordset to an array variable and then...
Avoiding Exclusive Access in Access: My Strategy for Seamless Updates
Today I had a request from a customer with a database used for What If scenarios to allow him to do either do updates from the main tables consistently or to boot all other users out of their front ends so that he can do an update when one is required. The system is...
Access Tip: How to Break into Your Code at Exactly the Right Moment
Today I was debugging Access and was working in some complex code that iterated over a large number of records. I wanted to stop at a particular record and run through it step by step. The record could be identified by using the RS variable which represented a DAO...
TDD in Access: Separating Logic from Forms for Cleaner Tests
I decided to do some tests today, but didn't even get to writing any yet. The issue was that I had a function tied to a button click event event inside a form which referenced various controls on the form. Normally, it's easy to refactor this by simply putting a...
Access Date Filtering: Between vs. >= and < Explained
When you need to specify date ranges in Access, remember the following helpful tips: By default, a date includes the time of midnight 00:00:00. So #1/1/2025# is equivalent to the expression #1/1/2025 00:00:00# or #1/1/2025 12:00:00 AM#. When you use Between, it always...
What Happens When You Press Ctrl-A in an Access Text Box?
Do you know what happens if you are in an Access text box and press Ctrl-A? You might expect all the text in it to be selected like a text box on a web page or in a Word document. But it doesn't. If you are in a text box on a form in the normal single form view it...
My VS Code Setup Saga: Copilot, Cogent, and a Few Surprises
I did more experimentation with Visual Studio Code today and the free Copilot Github and Cogent extensions. Copilot Github interfaces with the Github site Copilot feature which offers a free version. I also got the Cogent extension which acts as an agent for Copilot...
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