Access – New Find and Replace for Developers!

Most developers, at some point in time, need to make a change throughout a database, say change a field name. Now it can be a serious PITA to remember every object, every piece of code in which it was used, thus the need for a tool to help. Now I have previous written a post regarding this very subject, Great Access Tools – Find and Replace, but last week Philipp Stiefel of AccessDevTools was kind enough to invite me to try out a new add-in his company had developed. Below are my thoughts.

A Quick Overview of the Find and Replace for MS-Access

So let me introduce to you the AccessDevTools’ ‘Find and Replace for MS-Access’ add-in.

After downloading and installing the add-in you will have an extra tab in your Access Ribbon.
Find And Replace - Ribbon

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Huawei P30 Review

On was on the market to replace my 6-7+ year old Moto G cell phone and was looking for a phone for 2 primary uses:

  • Call quality (something that was very poor with my Moto G)
  • Good for taking pictures and videos with (I like photography)

So, like most people, I started researching online only to be submerged with too many options!

Like you, I’ve seen the stunning ads put forth by Apple, Huawei, Samsung, …

Now, from a technical standpoint, nothing comes close to the Huawei P30!  So I was already leaning that way.  When I went to my local vendor for my cell company (presently Koodo) and was up front and asked for advice and was told the same, the Huawei was the way to go and that there was no difference (besides screen size) between the P30 and P30 Pro.  So I purchase a P30.  Below are my thoughts on the unit after a couple solid months of use.

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Access – Bug – SQL Server Identity Bug with Access

Software Bug

It’s that time of the month, patch Tuesday, where Microsoft is supposed to resolve problems, but most often seems to ends up causing new ones at the same time!

Case and point, the latest Office update which has broken Access’ ability to recognize SQL Server Identity columns!

What We Know, Not Much Yet!

Firstly, it is important to note that this new issue only impacts those that use SQL Server as a back-end for the applications.

Furthermore, it only affects new links. So existing links should continue to work properly, but if you create new one, or Refresh existing links, then this issue will appear and impact you.

The problem can manifest itself in a number of ways and can impact forms, code, …  You may suddenly see #Deleted in your tables/queries, you may be now getting error 3167 – Record is Deleted, …

The issue was introduced in Office update/version 1912.

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My First Venture Into Using Flow

For months, if not years, MS and certain fellow MVPs have been promoting the virtues of Microsoft Flow. Until recently, I simply never had a reason to even look at it as I had no need for any of its supposed capabilities. That said, working on a new project for one of my clients and a new request by my client made me look into one particular aspect of Flow, the MySQL Connector.

My Goal

In the scenario we are talking about in this posting, I had a pretty simple MySQL database in which we wanted to create a table to save information relating to incoming and outgoing e-mails. Now since their e-mails are all through Office 365 and Flow now offers a PREMIUM (you pay extra for) MySQL connector, I had all the ingredients to make a go of things.

My Actual Experience

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Word – Date Field + 30 days

Working With Fields

First off, let me state I did not create the original code (I provide the link below to the original source). I merely tweaked it to display/format the output in the way I needed it to.

I was trying to help a client with what I thought was a simple request, add a current Date value in one location and in another, add a Date value for 30 days from today.

Now the first request is very straight forward and takes 2 seconds (Insert -> Date & Time), but the second request turned out to be a nightmare to accomplish.

To accomplish this using a Date field, well, it turned out to be a total nightmare. Not only is the formula itself extremely complex and not for the fain of heart to tackle, but working with Word Fields themselves is a complete and utter nightmare (You can’t copy/paste the Form Field formulas, so you have to manually retype formulas from scratch, seriously who comes up with this?! Microsoft, please fire these individuals!!!)! So, if you are going to go down this avenue arm yourself with some serious patience!

Below is the final Field formula that I used for my specific case:

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Access – Bug – Error 3340 – Query is corrupt

Software Bug
Issue Resolved!
As of December 10th, 2019 this issue should now be a thing of the past as Microsoft finally released the fix for the remaining versions. If you are still experiencing this error (“Error 3340 – Query ” is corrupt.”), update your Microsoft Office installation and it should go away. All the details are below.

The Bad News

Well it would seem Microsoft has, yet again, let another MAJOR bug slip through its net causing widespread mayhem of the Access world!

This latest bug impacts all flavors of Access 2010+ regardless of bitness, installation type (MSI vs CTR, …), …. so Access 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Office365, including the Microsoft Store edition of Access, are all impacted by this latest issue regardless of file format. (Yes, now is the time to panic!)

If your database suddenly started report an

Error 3340 – Query ‘Your Query Name’ is corrupt.

then read on!

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VBA – WIA – Combining/Merging Images

For a project I was working on I needed to combine/merge multiple images into a single image. I figured it could somehow be done with WIA, but was unsure how. So I started digging, okay Googling. Let’s just summarize that it wasn’t easy to dig up anything under VBA, but eventually I found a starting point, in a .net forum I believe, upon which I was able to build. The key was how to create a new blank canvas to insert the images into and the solution from that came from the following piece of code

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Everything You Never Wanted to Know About the Access WebBrowser Control

The Access WebBrowser control is one of the greatest and most frustrating controls available to any Access developer!

The beauty of this control is it enables you to gain the power of the web within your database. On the other hand, I have found it very frustrating to program as many properties/methods available to the WebBrowser control in other platforms are simply not implemented in Access’ WebBrowser control. I have also found documentation and concrete advanced examples to be a rare commodity making development more frustrating than it should normally be.

Looking For Information About The New Modern 'Edge'/'WebView2'/'Chromium' Web Browser Control?
If you are looking for information about the new Modern ‘Edge’/’WebView2’/’Chromium’ Web Browser control then take a look at the following instead:

Access Modern Web Browser Control
Everything You Never Wanted to Know About the Access Modern Web Browser Control
So, we have a new ‘Modern’ Web Browser control, some people have also referred to it as the Edge Web Browser control! Well that is if you are running MS365 and using the BETA or Current Update Channels. I thought, I would start documenting the new ‘Modern’ Web Browser control, like I had done for…

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So I thought I’d put ‘pen to paper’, in a manner of speaking, to share some of what I’ve learnt.

In the this article I will touch upon

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MS Access – Improved SQL Editor

Here’s another useful tool for those of you that work with RAW SQL and don’t use the QBE.

Like many features in Microsoft Access, the SQL Editor, SQL View has not made the slightest forward movement in 2-3 decades!

MS Access - Standard SQL Editor

The Query by Example Design View is exceptional, but the SQL View is primitive (to put it politely). It doesn’t even support the most basic text editor functions that even Notepad has, and Notepad isn’t the thing to be aiming for when you consider other proper text editors such as NotePad++, PSPad, …! Currently, in the SQL View of the SQL Editor, you can’t even:

  • Use Ctrl+A to select all the text
  • Perform a Find/Replace
  • Use TABs to indent your SQL Statements
  • …

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