Category Archives: MS Access General Information

MS Access – Improved HTML

Here’s yet another long standing demo I’ve been wanting to provide the community for a couple years now.

Origins

Several years ago I developed an e-mailing database.  I originally started out using the Rich Text Format (RTF) provided by Access, but anyone that gets into anything remotely advanced will quickly find out the Microsoft’s implementation falls very short of what is considered proper HTML or nor do RTF fields provide all the bells an whistles you’d expect in any modern tool.

For instance, with RTF, you can’t do simple things like:

  • Justify text
  • Insert links
  • Insert tables
  • Insert images/media
  • Format text
    • Strikethrough
    • Superscript
    • subscript
  • Use predefined formats (p, h1, h2, h3, …)
  • and the list goes on, and on, and …

Then add to that Microsoft doesn’t provide a way to view the raw source code behind the RTF fields and you need to resort to coding to access such information.

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MS Access – Improved Charting

Here’s a demo I’ve been wanting to share for years and finally got around to it!

Charting has always been one of Access’ greatest weaknesses in my opinion. When compared to the ease of charting in Excel, Access has been lagging behind for years/decades even. I find the dialogs confusing, and understanding how data series relate to my selected table/fields not to be obvious. Then add to that the fact that Microsoft added new charting capabilities, but not all versions have it… it just a nightmare to manage (open the new charts in older versions and get a blank area!).

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Managing User-Level Security in Access 2007+

Here’s another question I see pop up from time to time in the Forums.

Since Microsoft did away with User-Level Security (ULS) in Access 2007+, people often wonder how they can manage ULS; add/remove users, change password, …?

The reality of the situation is that although the commands are not front and center, ie they aren’t listed in the Ribbon anywhere, they are still actually there.  Just hidden!

So the question becomes, how can we access them?

Well, there are 2 ways to do this:

  • Issue the VBA commands directly
  • Customizing the Ribbon

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Access – Working with DBase dbf Files With Names That Are More Than 8 Characters

Official Fix Released (2018-08-07)
Before going any further, the workaround elaborated in the following article may no longer be necessary as I am happy to announce that the Access Dev Team just informed me that they have “added support for longer dBase file names, and currently support up to 64 chars.
This change is rolling out to O365 customers, and should be available to all (if not already) very shortly.” (which corresponds to Office365 Build 1807).

Have you ever needed to Import or Link a DBase DBF file in an Access? If your DBF filename is longer than 8 characters you’ll be in for a nice treat!


and once you click OK, you’ll get a nice error!!!

 So, it would seem that Access can’t handle dbf files with filenames that are more than 8 characters long.  We’re living back in the days of DOS.

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Access – Unlocking an Access VBA Project

I recently needed to unlock an Access VBA Project for which my client had lost the password. I was surprised to find that there was an incredibly simple hack that can unlock any Access password protected VBA project and I figured I’d share in case it could help others.

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MS Access – High DPI issues

With the higher and higher screen resolutions we are starting to see issues with Office application and High DPI displays. For instance, if you look at the following Answers forum thread

Has anybody at Microsoft ever edited an Access Form Chart control on a zoomed high DPI display?

you can see a few screenshots of just how useable Access can become in a High DPI environment.  Now, I mention Access, but this can be an issue with pretty much any application (Excel, Word, Outlook, …) and the fix elaborated below is applicable to any of them as well.

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MS Access – Determine Build Number

With the never ending updates for Office 365/2016 it has become necessary to be able to determine what build number you, your users, are running to be able to determine if you have all the latest updates installed, and/or determine if you have a known bugged update installed… so you can determine if you need to update/revert your installation.

As per most things, it isn’t really hard to locate this information once you’ve done so once.

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MS Access – Hide the Ribbon

One more of these common questions in the forums is how to hide the Access application ribbon completely.  As per the usual with Access, this can be accomplished a few different ways:

  • Using VBA
  • Using Ribbon XML

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Microsoft Access Runtime

I thought I’d take a second to explain what Microsoft Access Runtime is, and is not.

What is Microsoft Access Runtime?

In the simplest terms, Microsoft Access Runtime is a stripped down version of Access in which the developer/design tools have been removed/disabled, including VBA tools. So you can run existing databases, run their code, …, but any ability to edit them (objects or code), create new objects, etc is disabled or removed.

I also want to be 100% clear here, runtime locks down editing the database objects and code, not the data itself.  So in runtime, users can still fully work with the data as you have allowed them to do (full CRUD).  It just limits their ability to alter the actual “program”.

The primary purpose of the Microsoft Access Runtime version/edition is to enable people who don’t already have Microsoft Access installed to get a free version that allows them to fully work with any existing Microsoft Access database or in some instances it is a means to restrict the end-users abilities to edit the database (even if they already had the full version of Access)

What is Microsoft Access Runtime Used For?

As mentioned above, Microsoft Access Runtime is typically installed for users that do not already have a Full licensed version of Access.  So long as your user does not need to create and/or edit database objects such as: Forms, Report, VBA code, … then the FREE Microsoft Access Runtime will be perfect for them and allow them to run and use any existing database.

So with Microsoft Access Runtime you can fully utilize any existing database solutions, you simply can’t develop them!  You can still use forms, reports, execute the macros & code contained within, you just can go into design view, enter the VBA Editor (VBE), …

So Runtime allows you to distribute your database to user that do not already have Microsoft Access at absolutely no cost!  Since Office 2007, Microsoft Access Runtime is Free.

Something To Consider
Some developers will actually install the runtime version, regardless of whether or not their users already have the full version of Access installed, because it adds an additional layer of security to their databases and restricts what their users can change.
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