Category Archives: MS Excel

Microsoft Access’ Latest Bug Highlights The Importance Of Your Update Channel!

Maximize Stability in Microsoft Access: The Importance of Update Channels

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 2 weeks, people have been dealing with the latest Microsoft Access bug.

Software Bug
Another msaccess.exe Process Not Closing Properly Bug
There isn’t much information at this point in time on the root cause and no official fix to the issue (there are workarounds however, see below), but it would seem that with the most recent update(s) Microsoft Access no longer closes properly and leaves instances of the msaccess.exe running in the background.

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Find Most Recent Similarly Named File From A Folder

So I was working on a project and was faced with a little issue. You see, I created a program which processes files that are generated by a web application and that get downloaded to the user’s PC. The problem is that if the file already exists, Windows helpfully adds a numeric prefix to differentiate the files.

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MVP Awards Issued Today

I thought I’d just share that today was the big day in the Microsoft MVP community as today was the day that MVPs were awarded/re-awarded their MVP title.

Most Valuable Professionals

Technology Pros: We recognize exceptional community leaders for your technical expertise, positive influence on those around you and commitment to solving real world challenges with cutting-edge technology.Microsoft

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) program recognizes exceptional community leaders for their technical expertise, leadership, speaking experience, online influence, and commitment to solving real world problems.Microsoft

You can use the search page to examine how the current awardees are in the various fields/countries/…

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Ask Microsoft to Cancel Their Planned Removal of VBScript & Classic ASP

If you’re not up on the news, Microsoft has decided to deprecate and remove VBScript!

Microsoft Announces the Death of VBScript
As seems to be their new modus operandi, Microsoft has quietly rolled a hand grenade into the VBA development world with very little fanfare.
Impact of VBScript Deprecation
As an FYI for those of you curious, I’ve been trying to ascertain the true impact of the VBScript deprecation. Sadly, the official announcement provides 0 details whatsoever as to the impacted libraries/components. Feel free to check for yourself by using the 2 links provided below:
VBScript deprecation: Timelines and next steps
Learn about the deprecation of Visual Basic Scripting edition.

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Form and VBA Based Slider Control – Modernizing the Interface

Well, 96% of people indicated that they want to learn more about creating Slider controls.

So, in this post, I start covering the subject by introducing the ‘simplest’ (maybe not quite, but what you would think would be the simplest) slider control built entirely using a couple label controls and a command button.

I will post a few more articles in the coming days that will cover other possibilities:

  • Multi-range slider
  • Legacy Web Browser slider
  • Modern Web Browser slider

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Launching Internet Explorer for Testing Purposes

I’m always amazed at the level of pure stupidity that Microsoft exudes at times!

I know, we all have our moments in the sun, myself included, but Microsoft just seems to manage to outdo themselves.

I’m well aware that in an ideal world, Microsoft wants us all running MS365 and thus we would have all migrated all of our existing Web Browser controls to use the ‘new’ Modern Web Browser control, but that isn’t reality, not even close!  The fact of the matter, the legacy Web Browser control is still fully supported and thus why fix something that isn’t broken.  Beyond which, many people are simply not running MS365 so they don’t even have access to the Modern Web Browser control at all.

All of this to say, that many a database are still using the ‘Legacy’ Web Browser control, thus IE (Internet Explorer)!

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Running Cmd Commands and Returning The Results

Executing Command Prompt commands and capturing their output is a task that often arises unexpectedly. Whether you need to run DOS commands or command-line utilities, integrating this functionality into your VBA program can enhance its capabilities.

Surprisingly, Microsoft has not provided a straightforward way to execute these commands directly within VBA, leaving users to devise their own solutions. The need for this functionality spans various scenarios, from simple commands like `dir` and `ipconfig` to more complex command-line utilities, showcasing the true potential of this integration.

A quick search online reveals numerous solutions, many of which involve complex API calls or writing outputs to text files—approaches that can be overwhelming.

In this article, I’ll share a couple of simple methods that have proven effective for me over the years.
 
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