Edge – Invisible Menus, Where Did They Go?

On a new VM I decided to give Edge a whirl.

I don’t use Edge normally, or at all for that matter, but thought I’d try it out to see what it might be able to offer me.

It loaded up and I did a quick search (of course it defaults to MS’ Bing search engine) and that when the problems began.

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Microsoft’s Security Is Laughable!

Ever wonder why bad actors can so easily hack any system, it’s because of QA like what we see from Microsoft on a daily basis.

So, a while back Windows implemented ‘Controlled folders’ and I’ve been banging my head against my PC ever since.

Up until now I’ve managed to make things work, but today I wanted to use Camtasia to make a recording and when it came time to save the recording I got:

Protected folder access blocked Continue reading

VBA – Extracting What I Need From A String

VBA - Extract Component From String

Today, I thought I’d share a couple simple functions that can help extract certain elements from a string.

In this instance, all the functions are built upon the same technique, iterate through the string character by character to see if it is in the desired ascii range, if so keep it, otherwise move on to the next character.

Basically, each characters is represented by a numeric ascii value:

  • 48-57 => 0-9 (numbers)
  • 65-90 => A-Z (uppercase characters)
  • 97-122 => a-z (lower case characters)

we can test each character by converting it to it’s numeric value by using the Asc() function.  Similarly, we can get the string representation of any ascii value by using the Chr() function.

  • Chr(48) => 0, Asc(“0”) => 48
  • Chr(66) => B, Asc(“B”) => 66
  • Chr(122) => z, Asc(“z”) => 122

So let’s look how we can put this all to use.

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Access – The Case Of The Missing Ribbon Icons

Access - Missing Ribbon Icons

Today, I opened a database that I haven’t used in a while that has a custom ribbon and only had half of the icons showing?!

I’m sure many of you out there can relate, when I encounter a random problem I assume it has to be something I am doing wrong.  However in this specific instance, this is a longstanding database that has been in operation for well over a decade. So, I started my troubleshooting by following the typical steps:

  • reviewed the Ribbon XML
  • validated the images existed. No issue there
  • reviewed the VBA code behind the ribbon
  • ensured my database compiled properly
  • tried updating the xmlns (xml namespace), but that made no difference either

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Access AEK is Almost Upon Us

For my German speaking friends, take note that AEK is almost upon us as Karl Donaubauer is holding this conference October 22nd and 23rd, 2022.

This year’s conference is both being held in-person and online, so you can choose what suits your interests.

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Access – Bar Code Generator

Access - Bar Code Generator

After my last article on QR Codes:

I wanted to explore QR Code’s sibling, the Bar Code.

Now, for some bar codes you can install special fonts and simply use that font to display the bar code.  That said, like with the QR Code generator I set out to see what I could do using the WebBrowser control so that I didn’t need to install anything, didn’t need to pay anything and didn’t require any special dependencies to work.

Google eventually led me to really impressive bar code javascript (js) library:

This js library already allows for all the following Bar Code types:

  • CODE128
    • CODE128 (automatic mode switching)
    • CODE128 A/B/C (force mode)
  • EAN
    • EAN-13
    • EAN-8
    • EAN-5
    • EAN-2
    • UPC (A)
    • UPC (E)
  • CODE39
  • ITF
    • ITF
    • ITF-14
  • MSI
    • MSI10
    • MSI11
    • MSI1010
    • MSI1110
  • Pharmacode
  • Codabar

and, much, much more.  Review the GitHub repo to learn more about all of its capabilities.

Thus, with this in hand and my QR Code Generator as a template I was all set!

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Access – The Mysterious Case Of The Listbox Order Exception

Confused Turkey

Just a quick note.

I was working on a little sample I wanted to post here and thought I was loosing it when I couldn’t get a textbox to go in front of a listbox. I tried using the ‘Bring to front’ & ‘Send to back’ commands numerous time, nothing worked.  I was as perplexed as our turkey friend here!

I thought it had to be me doing something blatantly wrong so I reached out to the Access Dev Team only to have them confirm the behavior. They informed me that it wasn’t possible.

Say What?! Is someone pulling my leg?

I can successfully place a textbox on top of a textbox, combobox, checkbox, …,command button, web browser, …, but not a listbox?  Seriously.

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Access – QR Code Generator

Access - QR Code Generator

I saw a question in a forum which made me want to play around with QR Codes in Access.

I’ve seen QR Code ActiveX controls for sale, solutions that use Excel and copy the generated code from there, … but I wanted something that could simply be integrated easily within Access (or any other application for that matter) that didn’t involve installing things, paying money, interacting with outside applications…  So a simple standalone solution.

How hard could it be?!

I knew that there existed a few javascript (js) QR Code libraries, no point reinventing the wheel! so I did a quick Google search and found a simple js library that had no dependencies (bonus!):

with this in hand, it was just a question of using the knowledge found on my WebBrowser control article:

to put it all together in a WebBrowser control within a form.

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Access – Controlling the Mouse Cursor

I recently saw that Mike Wolfe published an article about using APIs to control the mouse cursor in an application:

While I have use that exact approach myself in the past, I wanted to briefly touch upon a several other built-in solutions for controlling the mouse cursor that may avoid the need for the use of such APIs depending on your scenario.

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Flow – Don’t Rely On The Undo Command

Flow - Undo Don't

A word to the wise, do not count on, or even use the Undo command in Flow as it gives very unreliable results!

Flow introduced a new Undo command recently after much grovelling from its users, refer to:

 

Flow - Undo Hint

The issue is that the command doesn’t work and can result in unpredictable and disastrous results!

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