VBA – Creating Windows Notification Without APIs

Today, I wanted to explore creating Windows Notifications, those popups that appear typically in the bottom right-hand corner of Windows to let you know you received e-mail, the antivirus ran and found nothing …

You know, these things:

I have seen very convoluted code filled with various APIs to mimic this, but today, I wanted to show you a little of what we can do with VBA and PowerShell that should amaze you and goes far beyond what is possible via other techniques.

In the first section we will explore creating Notification Balloons using naive PowerShell (called from our VBA). In the second section, we’ll kick it up a notch and deploy an open-source PowerShell module that we enable us to create some truly remarkable notifications all from simple VBA calls.

So let’s dig in!

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VBA – RegEx – Trimming Multiple Spaces Throughout a String

Yesterday, I came across the following thread:

Run Excel Trim Function from Access

I tried to find this on AWF but was unable to find it, apologies if I am covering ground already covered. I learned yesterday that Trim in Excel works differently in Excel than Access: Trim in Excel removes all spaces but one from a given string: Trim(“1234 567 89”) returns “1234…

in which NauticalGent was asking how one could run an Excel WorkSheet function from within Access to remove multiple spaces that appeared in strings.

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Using RegEx To Validate A URL

In my last post I shared an example of how we can use RegEx to validate a Password to ensure it followed some minimum rules we set forth, to learn more simply consult:

Using RegEx To Validate A Password

I was cleaning up some of my code and organizing a few RegEx samples and realized I never created a routine to validate passwords. Thus, I decided to do so. Now, before going any further, it is obviously possible to create, using standard VBA parsing functions (InStr, Left, Right, Mid, …) iterating over each character for each rule you wish to enforce, a routine to perform such a validation, but where’s the fun in that! And let’s be serious, this is what RegEx was made to do!

Today, I thought I’d share another RegEx example to validate URLs! This is a great way to control with what users input in your forms and hopefully ensure that they are valid.

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Using RegEx To Validate A Password

I was cleaning up some of my code and organizing a few RegEx samples and realized I never created a routine to validate passwords.

Thus, I decided to do so.

Now, before going any further, it is obviously possible to create, using standard VBA parsing functions (InStr, Left, Right, Mid, …) iterating over each character for each rule you wish to enforce, a routine to perform such a validation, but where’s the fun in that! And let’s be serious, this is what RegEx was made to do!

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Microsoft Access WizHook What?

There is a little known but powerful feature available to Microsoft Access VBA coders call WizHook. Very little about it is known as it isn’t documented. Much has been discovered over the years by tenacious coders through trial and error.

It can do things like check if a file exists, sort arrays and much, much more! I’d tell you more, but no one truly knows what all it can do.

You can discover more about some of its capabilities by using the VBA Object Browser and showing Hidden Members.

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Excessive Usage By The Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry Process

I recently have found my PC to be switching into boost mode, fans blazing and yet, I wasn’t really doing anything that should have caused it to do so.

So, after this occurring a few times, I opened the Task Manager to investigate. What I found was a process called ‘Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry’ in Very high Power usage and and sucking back 50 some percent of my CPU.

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A New OneDrive Is Upon Us

Nope, you’re not imagining things, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, something has definitely changed! Microsoft has started rolling out a completely new and revamped OneDrive application. (if you haven’t gotten it, know that it is on its way in a future impending update)

They had previously mentioned it in postings such as:

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Simulating Keyboard Keystroke Sequences

I recently published an article and YouTube video about Speech Recognition

Adding Speech Recognition To Your Application

Why type when you can talk! And so I set off to see if we could enable some form of dictation/speech recognition with an application. Yes, obviously for my testing I used my favorite tool, Access, but this solution can easily be implemented in any VBA application: Access, Excel, Word, … Now, previously, I posted about making Access talk to user, read back content using the SAPI library and so I started searching, exploring and low and behold, SAPI also offers speech recognition capabilities!!!

If you watch the YouTube video I demonstrate simulating keyboard keystroke sequences via the keybd_event API to enable/disable the Windows Speech Recognition application.

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Adding Speech Recognition To Your Application

Why type when you can talk!

And so I set off to see if we could enable some form of dictation/speech recognition with an application. Yes, obviously for my testing I used my favorite tool, Access, but this solution can easily be implemented in any VBA application: Access, Excel, Word, …

Now, previously, I posted about making Access talk to users, read back content using the SAPI library

Speak to Me (Access), Speak to me!

Here’s something I dabbled with years ago, but never truly needed in any way and decided to revisit to help with accessibility to a database I was working on. What am I ‘talking’ about, SAPI (Microsoft Speech API) automation! Using VBA to narrate text. Why? Well, by narrating content you can help users with poor vision, allow users to do other things while still being able to ingest content by simply listening, and so on.

and so I started searching, exploring and low and behold, SAPI also offers speech recognition capabilities!!!

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Another Massive Online Data Breach!

Heads up, everyone!

A massive data breach has been released online, exposing over 26 billion records for hackers to exploit. This means that your online security is at risk, and that you need to take action to protect yourself! The simplest precautionary step you can take to protect yourself is to rotate the password for each of your online accounts. Yes, it can be annoying, but it’s a small investment of time to ensure that no one hacks your accounts or performs identity theft. As they say, better safe than sorry!

Companies such as:

Twitter
Dropbox
LinkedIn
Adobe
Evite
Canva
and many more

have their data in this massive breach.

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