Total Access Emailer is the most popular email program for Microsoft Access. Easily send personalized emails to everyone in your table or query. You can even attach filtered reports as PDF files for each contact.
Total Access Emailer uses industry standard SMTP to send emails bypassing the limitations of Outlook and sending messages from multiple FROM addresses. A popular SMTP server is Google Gmail with their free and paid Workgroup accounts.
Google Gmail SMTP Protocol Changed
Google sends emails with its SMTP server at smtp.gmail.com. A few years ago, to increase security, Google required users to explicitly set Gmail accounts to allow Less Secure Apps for this feature.
Starting June 1, 2022, Google no longer supports Less Secure Apps for sending SMTP emails which they consider to be a security hole. To address this, they offer two options.
Creating and using a Gmail App Password
Using Google Gmail API OAUTH 2.0 protocol which is ideal for organizations with paid Google Workspace accounts
Total Access Emailer and the Google Gmail SMTP Server
We are pleased to announce the release of updates to Total Access Emailer that support the new Google Gmail protocol requirements.
Whether you run it as a Microsoft Access add-in or through its VBA Runtime Library, Total Access Emailer supports using a Google App Password or a Google email API Client ID and Secret ID with OAUTH 2.0 authentication.
From the Options form’s SMTP Settings tab, there’s a new section for Gmail Authentication which launches a Wizard to load your account:
With the Professional Version’s royalty-free VBA runtime library, you can set this up and deploy it to others, or your users can authenticate it with their own Google Client account using a new procedure to support this.
Instructions for configuring Google Gmail SMTP with Total Access Emailer are here:
These versions are now shipping with support for the increased security protocols for Google Gmail and Microsoft Office 365, plus many other New Features:
FMS President Luke Chung was a presenter at the Virtual Microsoft Access DevCon 2020 in Vienna, Austria on April 23, 2020. He gave a presentation called “Remote access to Access“, which is available for everyone to watch.
If you missed the event, you can visit Virtual Access DevCon 2020 to watch all the presentations giving by all of the speakers.
Luke Chung’s video presentation
Remote Desktop and RemoteApp let your users run Access applications without having to installing anything on their local machine. That includes Access, the database, and any related programs. It lets users run the program across the network or Internet, from their PC or even a Mac. There are different approaches depending on whether the host is internal or in the cloud, and for backend databases in Access and Microsoft SQL Server.
PowerPoint Slides for the Presentation
Special thanks to Microsoft Access MVP Karl Donaubauer, who hosted the fourth annual Access DevCon and made it an online event during the COVID-19 lockdown.
An important announcement from the Microsoft Access team addresses the problems with connecting to Access ACCDB databases from other programs.
The ACCDB database format was introduced with Access 2007 and offered a new Access Database Engine (ACE) for external programs to connect to it. Connecting to the earlier MDB database format was never an issue because that requires Data Access Object (DAO) which is part of Windows.
Connecting to Microsoft Access Databases Outside of Access
ACE was available when Access 2007 and 2010 were installed. However, later Access versions sandboxed ACE so only Office could use it. It prevented other programs, including Microsoft programs such as PowerBI and the SQL Sever Migration Assistant (SSMA), from using it to support ACCDB databases.
The solution was to separately install the ACE Redistributable which provided ACE OLEDB (Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.16.0, or Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0). That was a hassle and complicated because
Not every user had permissions to install it
Installations were 32 or 64-bit specific
Even if it were installed, it could be out-of-sync with the Access version that is installed.
This was especially frustrating because when Access is installed on the machine, it includes ACE but simply didn’t allow other programs to use it. And because Access/Office 365 was constantly being updated, its version of ACE may support features that the redistributable didn’t, creating conflicts.
ACE is Now Available with Access
With this Microsoft announcement, ACE is now exposed and available for external programs to use it.
If you have Office 365, or click-to-run versions of Access 2016/2019 Consumer installed, you no longer need to install ACE to support external programs.
This change enables previously unsupported scenarios, including Microsoft programs, to connect to Access ACCDB databases without installing ACE. It eliminates incompatibility issues between different versions of ACE. It also helps our programs Total Access Admin, Total Access Startup, and Total Visual Agent connect to Access ACCDB databases directly.
With Congress and President Trump at a budget impasse, funding for significant portions of the US Federal government ended midnight Friday, December 18, 2018. Historically, government employees are not paid on time but are retroactively paid after the new budget is implemented. The same is not true for government contractors.
Government contractors compete against each other to provide a wide range of services such as computer programming, construction, security guards, cafeterias, janitorial services, technical experts, maintenance workers, and much more. When the government shuts down, contractor staff are not needed or can’t do their work. But they are real companies and people who suffer. Long-term, it’s bad for US taxpayers.
Our Contract with Amtrak is Suspended
We have a government contract with Amtrak which was suspended by this letter:
This contract provides help for Microsoft Access database programming and is relatively small. We do not have dedicated staff for the contract, so we are not really affected as our people will work on other projects.
Unfortunately, we have colleagues who are government contractors or in businesses more dependent on the government who are significantly impacted by the shutdown. This is especially true for companies who provide staff to work at government facilities that are now closed. Most are hesitant to speak publicly about their experiences in fear their government clients would be offended, so we’d like to share our experiences and theirs.
Very Tough Situation and Decisions for Government Contractors and Their Employees
Since government contractors are unlikely to be repaid when the budget is finally resolved, government contractors with dedicated staff for those contracts need to decide whether to pay their employees for time they never expected to not charge to the government. The impact is somewhat offset by the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, and maybe they can force employees to take vacation days. But as the shutdown lasts longer, contractors will have to pay their employees from their own funds. Not paying them runs the risk that the employees leave and won’t be available once the budget is resolved. One cannot expect employees to remain loyal if they aren’t paid. Meanwhile, employees are dusting off their resumes and seeking alternative employers.
Small businesses are especially vulnerable since many contracts have small profit margins, so without significant cash and lines of credit, a cash flow problem can quickly bankrupt a company. Even generous owners who try to do the “right thing”, may not be able to if their cash is depleted. That would lead to fewer government contractors in the future and higher costs to taxpayers.
A friend of mind who owns a firm completely focused on servicing the federal government shared:
“As contractors, our employees still get paid and yet we are unable to bill. Cash is king and small companies like mine live and die by cash. This is the worst.”
Media Coverage
On December 26th, we sent a Twitter message with the letter we received from Amtrak and the sympathy we feel for government contractors and their employees.
“Business owners who have [dedicated] staff are making the decision: Do we pay people or not, even though we won’t get paid by the government? Either you force people to take vacation, or you pay them, to be a good company ― but depending how long it drags on, one may not have a choice.”
Self-Inflicted Wound that Should be Resolved Promptly
Eventually the budget will be resolved. We hope the parties come to their senses and do it sooner rather than later because innocent people who’ve dedicated their firms and lives to providing a professional service to US taxpayers are at risk and feeling real pain. That’s terrible for them now and our country long-term.
Microsoft Azure lets you economically and quickly host enterprise quality SQL Server databases in the cloud. The cost of each database is relatively modest.
Managing Resources and Costs for Individual Databases
However, as you add more databases, larger databases, and/or databases that require more resources, costs increase. Providing more resources to a database is helpful when it demands it, but when users aren’t on it or during non-business hours, it may be wasted capacity. Even during business hours, one can have some databases being utilized more than others at unpredictable levels.
Pooled Resources Across Multiple Databases
Fortunately, Azure offers an Elastic Pool option to share resources across multiple databases. If the demand on your databases is inconsistent (spiky), you can provide a high level of capacity that’s available to the most demanding database while allowing other databases to share those abundant resources when needed.
You no longer need to set the limits of each database,
You are not charged a per database monthly fee which is great for supporting lightly used databases.
Migrating Existing SQL Server Databases to Elastic Pool
Microsoft provides information on SQL Elastic Pools but does not explain how to convert existing databases to an Elastic Pool.
FMS President Luke Chung wrote a new paper with step-by-step instructions on how to convert existing SQL Server databases on Azure to an Elastic Pool without the need to change the database connection strings:
Starting May 9, we received many reports of Remote Desktop connections failing globally. Users received error messages like this when they tried to remote to machines they connected to successfully for a long time:
Remote Desktop Connection Error
An authentication error has occurred.
The function requested is not supported
Remote computer: <computer name>
This could be due to CredSSP encryption oracle remediation.
For more information, see https:/go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=866660
The link goes to this page, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4093492/credssp-updates-for-cve-2018-0886-march-13-2018, and explains the Credential Security Support Provider protocol (CredSSP). It offers extensive information on a series of updates since March 2018. It recommends some steps but isn’t very clear what those changes are nor whether those changes are needed to be made by network administrators globally via group policies, or group policies on every PC and VM.
Caused by a Microsoft Security Patch
The Microsoft Security patch issued on Tuesday, May 8th triggered the problem by setting and requiring remote connections at the highest level (CredSSP Updates for CVE-2018-0886)::
It changed the default setting from Vulnerable to Mitigated which means that any PC using CredSSP is not be able to use insecure versions. If your PC received the May update but the target PC hasn’t implemented the CredSSP update, the PC receives the error message when it tries to connect to that PC.
The automatic Windows patch to raise the security level is not implemented if the PC doesn’t allow automatic updates. This mismatch between the implementation of a security requirement (which is not optional) without the corresponding automatic update may be the source of this problem.
However, there are many situations such as development, testing, build, staging, and deployment environments which require a stable environment that would be destroyed by automatic Windows updates.
We continue to research this.
Symptoms
The symptoms are rather strange because we found that some machines successfully connected while others didn’t.
For instance, we had a Windows 7 machine that hosted Remote Desktop. A Windows 7 PC had no problem connecting to it, but the same user connecting from a Windows 10 machine failed when that was never an issue before and the host machine allowed remote connection for years.
There are also reports of problems with Windows 10 machines connecting to Windows 10 machines, and people locked out of their Azure VMs.
Workaround Solution
One could rollback the security update, but rather than risking other security problems, there’s a quick fix.
Simply adjust the Remote Desktop settings on the host machine to a lower security level. From File Explorer, choose Computer, right-click and select Properties, then click Change Settings, and go to the Remote tab.
From Windows 10, uncheck the option to “Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication (recommended)”:
From Windows 7, it’s setting the option to the Less Secure option rather than More Secure:
Once these are set, users can remote to the machine again.
Microsoft Comment
Based on this blog post, a Microsoft colleague told us this:
“I double checked the Windows bug database and they are aware of the problem. No ETA on a fix yet unfortunately. Your workaround is what’s suggested to temporarily get around the error, although it is not suggested as a long-term fix.”
Alternative Solutions
This section was added after our initial workaround and is based on the experience of many users struggling with this problem.
The problem is often caused because the local machine is patched with the Windows Update and the machine it’s connecting to is not patched for the CredSSP issue. If both systems were patched then this error would not occur.
There are two options:
Update the Target Machine
Update the target machine with the patch for the CredSSP issue (preferable).
Update the Local Machine
In many cases, you don’t have the option to modify anything on the target machine. You may even be prevented from modifying your own machine, but assuming you have administrator rights, you can change the Group Policy on your local machine to use the Vulnerable setting.
Big picture, it’s ridiculous to lower one’s security settings to connect to a machine that wasn’t updated. It would be much better if it prompted or automatically connected to lower level machines without turning off the higher security level for everything else. All it takes is one target machine that you can’t modify to force this change on your machine. But at least you can get your work done.
Enter run “gpedit.msc” to edit group policy, or from Windows start, enter “Group Policy” and select “Edit group Policy”:
Windows 10
Windows 7
From the treeview, choose Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Credentials Delegation
Select “Encryption Oracle Remediation” from the right pane (if it’s not there, it probably means your machine wasn’t patched):
Enable and set the Protection Level to Vulnerable:
Hope this helps.
Additional Problem: Cannot Connect via VPN
We’ve discovered problems with VPN connection if the PC has Remote set to the higher security level.
The network connection fails with error: Cannot load the Remote Access Connection Manager service. Error 711:
Lower Your Remote Desktop Security to have the Security to Make the VPN Connection
Apparently, the Remote Desktop setting on the client side impacts its ability to connect via VPN to the host side.
By lowering the setting to less secure for others to connect to the PC, the PC can now successfully connect to the VPN. What a mess.
Additional Discussions
I’ve also been involved in other online discussions:
It’s late August, and it’s shocking that this problem remains after so many months. I am extremely frustrated by the Windows update policies and Microsoft’s inadequate testing before these security patches are deployed. This is very disruptive and dangerous to many organizations trying to fulfill their missions expecting their PCs to be reliable.
Microsoft security “purists” claim the current approach is necessary to address the serious threats facing users. I guess it wouldn’t be an issue if the updates worked without disruption. However, the downside of this medicine may exceed the illnesses they are trying to prevent.
Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg are getting blamed for a large number of issues from promoting fake news, election fraud, mishandling user data, and profiting from selling user data.
While some of that may be true, the Facebook security breach is actually a violation of Facebook API licensing rules by the people who used it. Facebook provided the data and encouraged developers like us to create innovative solutions for the Facebook ecosystem. They weren’t selling the data.They weren’t even charging us to use it.
Our Facebook App with Social Network Analysis and Maps
In 2010, we created a Facebook application using our Sentinel Visualizer technology to perform Social Network Analysis (SNA) based on a user’s friends’ friends. It would automatically cluster friends so you could quickly see their groups (high school, college, work, family, in-laws, clubs, etc.).
Each box (picture) was one of your friends, and you could move them around the network, hover over them to get their info, or click on them to go to their page.
We also plotted friends on a Microsoft Bing Map making it easy to see who were near you or where you were visiting.
We launched our free Sentinel Visualizer Facebook App to a limited number of users and it started to gain followers. People were amazed to see which of their friends knew each other. The application started to go viral. We were having trouble supporting the traffic.
Not Allowed to Save Facebook Data
One of the things developers couldn’t do was to save Facebook’s data. All we collected were the user names and email addresses people provided when they registered our program. Unfortunately, other developers didn’t abide by Facebook’s terms and the data improperly got to Cambridge Analytica and others.
Facebook Stopped Making the Data Available
Our app ceased to work when Facebook limited their APIs and prevented our ability to get to the list of your friends’ friends among your network.
It’s not entirely Facebook’s fault for trying to spur innovation by sharing their data for free. Some developers violated the trust Facebook gave them.
The Full Story
Here’s our new web page describing our experience in detail:
There are many online Microsoft Access resources available from the Access and Office teams.
New Microsoft Access Tech Community Site
This is the Microsoft Access development team’s community site that’s integrated with the Access program. Expect to see more and more information and discussions here:
If you have an Office 365 subscription, and want to get the latest builds of Office/Access, become an Office Insider.
Sign up from the PC that will host the insider version. Of course the insider version is not ready for prime-time, so don’t use it for your development or production environment.
FMS President Luke Chung was a presenter at the Microsoft Access DevCon 2017 in Vienna, Austria in early April.
Before giving two conference presentations, he was sat down and spoke with Philipp Stiefel of codekabinett.com of Germany. Philipp is creating a series of videos discussing VBA development.
How end-users migrate from Excel to Access, then learn how to code
Why people are hesitant to purchase third party products and how FMS overcomes that by showcasing the value we offer
Using tools like Total Access Analyzer to catch errors before shipping and learning best practices
Using the module code in Total Visual SourceBook to address problems we’ve already solved so you can focus on the unique issues in your applications
The value of creating consistent, quality code
How to improve code for developers of all backgrounds
Being in constant “growth” mode to look for ways to become a better developer
FMS Inc. is proud of the quality of products we have produced for the past 30 years. We are honored to continuously be regarded as a leading expert in the Access community. Thank you for supporting us and we hope you enjoy the 20 minute interview!
The day after an amazing personal interview of Julian Assange by Sean Hannity aired on his TV show, FMS President Luke Chung was invited to discuss the related technology on his radio show.
Hannity traveled to London to interview Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy where he’s seeking asylum. They discussed an overview of Assange’s role as founder of WikiLeaks, and their obtaining and publishing the emails from the Democratic National Committee the weeks before the US Presidential election. Some people attribute Hillary Clinton’s loss to the revelations in those emails especially from John Podesta, the former White House Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Clinton campaign. They are also accusing the Russians for hacking (stealing) and providing the data to Assange so Donald Trump could win the election.
Radio Show
On January 4, 2017, I was on the radio show with Sean Hannity and Brigadier General Eli Ben Meir, former Israeli Military Intelligence chief. The three of us discussed the WikiLeaks disclosures. I commented specifically on:
Cyber attacks and the security breach at OPM disclosed non-classified government employees and by omission who were covert at American Embassies globally.
Noting Julian Assange’s careful word choices to exclude Russia as source without excluding them as the ultimate source of his sources.
The need for WikiLeaks’ to keep their sources confidential and how they amplified the data from Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.
Different approaches to preventing cyber attacks depending on the cause. “It’s one thing when someone steals your car because they broke into it. It’s another thing when someone steals your car because you left your keys in the ignition.”
Here’s the audio of the show:
My segment starts at the 6:50 mark. Sean and General Meir speak first, then I start around 9:25. Final comments at 14:15 and it wraps up by 14:50.
Additional Issues
Only a limited amount of information can be discussed in such a short interview. Some additional issues to consider are:
Data Security
Securing data over the internet and inside organizations is very challenging. Threats may come from:
External hacks that need to be monitored and defeated
Internal people who unintentionally leave the front door unlocked
Internal people who intentionally leak information
Different solutions are required for each type of threat. Some are at the software vendor, design, and developer level, while others involve end-user training, background checks, and monitoring.
Applications can be built so that simply disclosing a user name and password doesn’t compromise the whole system by require two-factor authentication and registering devices that can use those credentials.
Unfortunately, many systems were built well before today’s cyber threats existed. The cost of making those systems more secure without breaking their existing functionality will be daunting and expensive. In many cases, the original source code, development environment and/or vendor are long gone, so the only option is to replace them which is also very expensive and time consuming.
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are Not Heroes
We need to keep in mind that the WikiLeaks exposed top secret US information by publishing the disclosures from Manning and Snowden. Lives were put at risk and lives may have been lost because of those publications. The Arab Spring was inflamed in part by the disclosure of diplomatic communications and one could argue the human tragedy in Syria is tied to this as well. While Republicans are celebrating and defending Assange and WikiLeaks now for the DNC emails, the tables may turn very quickly.
Data That’s Not Exposed May be More Dangerous
While many are focused on the DNC emails, it’s not unreasonable to assume the people who hacked that also got the RNC emails. Data can be power, and in the wrong hands, data can be used for nefarious purposes such as blackmail.
If the RNC data were compromised, we should be extremely worried if the hackers discovered it was more valuable to keep private than public. Whether they use it directly or sell it to another party or country, the information can make victims puppets by threatening the exposure of their personal data. It’s not uncommon during E-discovery of an email server to discover all sorts of inappropriate language, behavior and activity conducted by individuals in an organization. Disclosures of affairs, homosexual activity, underage sex, bribery, unethical business dealings, breeches of confidentiality, collusion, and actual crimes are often found in email threads and can be used for blackmail.
Total Access Emailer is the most popular email program for Microsoft Access. Easily send personalized emails to everyone in your table or query. You can even attach filtered reports as PDF files for each contact. 
Google sends emails with its SMTP server at smtp.gmail.com. A few years ago, to increase security, Google required users to explicitly set Gmail accounts to allow Less Secure Apps for this feature.
From Windows 7, it’s setting the option to the Less Secure option rather than More Secure:
Once these are set, users can remote to the machine again.
Background