Recently, due to various reasons, I’ve had to spend a lot of time dealing with backup software and thought I’d share a few of my impressions and experiences. I will briefly touch upon:
WD Backup has stopped working
I had been using WD Backup for some time now and suddenly, after a Windows update I believe, it stopped working altogether. It would start to load and then report
and crash.
Buying a Tablet, Think Long and Hard Before Purchasing it!
More and more we see people buying these ultra thin tablet and even notebook, but is that a smart choice? Have you truly considered all the repercussions of such a purchase?
Now beyond considerations like:
- Apple doesn’t support flash, so no you can’t use any flash website or flash applications
- Ports! Many of these devices don’t include something as simple as a USB port to upload/download content (images, videos, …)
- OS! Not all tablet can’t run applications such as Microsoft Office (kind of important if it is for business).
- Hardware specifications & limits. Many have very limited storage and since they are sealed cannot be upgraded in any manner.
recently one of my clients was caught off guard when their Surface Pro 2 suddenly failed and they discovered
- Their backups were not running properly
- Because it was a tablet, there was absolutely no way to extract the Hard Drive to recover any of their files!
- Microsoft no longer supports the device
Alternatives to Microsoft Windows and Office
With the latest fiasco coming out of Redmond with their most recent update deleting people’s profiles, documents, … it got me thinking about where we are in 2018. If we were in 1980, I’d say one doesn’t have many viable options and you’re stuck with your problems, but that simply is no longer true in the least! As such, I thought I offer some options for you to consider should you decide you are fed up with the never ending bugs and updates with bugs pouring out of Microsoft and their complete lack of respect for their users. You can read more, if you so wish:
Office 2019 is Here!
Yep, it’s that time again, a new release of Office is upon us. Microsoft finally publicly announce the release of Office 2019. You can read their official post: Office 2019 is now available for Windows and Mac.
What you need to know
Most importantly, at this point in time Office 2019 is only available to “commercial volume license customers” presently and will be release to the public at large “in a few weeks.” So don’t try to run out to get it, because you can’t, it’s not available yet. Microsoft is simply trying to create hype right now.
The most important thing to immediately be aware of regarding Office 2019 is the little fact that Office 2019 only runs on Windows 10 or Windows Server 2019. So by omission, it will not run on Windows 7 and/or Windows 8, 8.1
You can read about all the system requirements at System requirements for Office
It has been now reported to me by fellow MVPs that Office 2019 defaults to a 64-bit installation, so if you aren’t careful you can easily break your existing applications that use 32-bit ActiveX controls, 32-bit API call if they don’t already include 64-bit conditional compiler directives, … You can find the instructions on how-to change the default so you can actually install the 32-bit version at Download and install or reinstall Office 365 or Office 2019 on a PC or Mac:
You can then select the version you want. Select Other options, and choose the language and the 64-bit or 32-bit version of Office, and then select Install.
Access – Add Time to a Date
Just a quick post today to cover, what appears to be, a simple question.
How can I add a Time value to a Date value?
Static Dates with a Static Time Defined
So say you have a date value (US format – mm/dd/yyyy) of 9/19/2018 and you wanted to append a time value of 7:30 AM, how can this be done?
Well, this is where one has to be aware of a function like TimeSerial(), similar to DateSerial() but for times. Thus, the solution is remarkably simple and would look like
#9/19/2018# + TimeSerial(7,30,0)
Dynamic Dates with a Static Time Defined
Another common use is that we need to build queries/code that uses todays date, using the Date() function, but need the criteria to include a specific time. Well, the same approach can be used in such a scenario as well, and the expression/code would look something like
Date() + TimeSerial(7,30,0)
Another example
Below we want to add the time of 7:30 AM to a date 5 days in the future
DateAdd("d",5,Date()) + TimeSerial(7,30,0)
As you can see, the basic principle can be applied to pretty much any existing code.
Access – Virtual Query
It doesn’t happen too often, but in certain scenario it may be necessary to build a query based on static values. I don’t know if there is a technical term that already exist, but I’m going with the term ‘Virtual Query’, ‘Static Value Query’ or ‘Hardcoded Value Query’.
Say you perform a series of data manipulation/extraction and wish to push these static values out as a query for use in other functions. So how can this be done?
A Concrete example:
For use in the SQL Code below I am trying to build a query around the following data
| FirstName | Daniel |
| LastName | Pineault |
| DOB | 1989-11-22 |
| BankAmount | 1.00 |
I didn’t like this approach for a number of reasons
- It is less than ideal to be inserting/deleting records over and over
- You either need to create a table and predefine the field names ahead of time which doesn’t make it very versatile, or get into aliasing field names at runtime.
Access – Password Protect a Form or a Report
Here’s another common question that we see in Access forums:
How can I password protect a form/report?
As per with most thing Access related, there are numerous ways to handle this and in the post and sample database I cover 3:
- Hardcoded password
- Table based password (enable the admin to change it without needing to edit a form)
- Authorized User table (recognize the user without needing any password)
Access – Textbox Hint Text
I was trying to help out in a recent forum discussion regarding wanting to add “hints” to controls like you can do in HTML forms.
While Access provide a few means to add certain information, things like: Format, Status Bar text and Control Tips. Sadly, these are often simply unreliable, illegible or simply overlooked by users. If you wish to learn more about these approached then look over my Access – Providing Control Hints and Suggestions article.
VBA – Forcing Applications to Close
The Headache
I’ve been experiencing issues with longstanding code that opens other Office applications (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) are not managing to close the applications even though the code used to work just fine. This is especially true of PowerPoint! So you end up with hidden processes running in the background and this can lock files and cause all sorts of headaches.
Now, I can’t say why this is now happening, when the .Quit command used to work beautifully, but I had to come up with a way to insure that I didn’t leave such processes, below is my solution.