In Microsoft Access, a common need is to have multiple combo boxes or list boxes on a form, and to have the selection in one combo box limit the choices in a second combo box or listbox. For example, consider an Address form containing State and City lookups. When you select a state, you want the list of cities list to be limited the selected state.
This is known as cascading combo boxes or synchronized combo boxes.
We recently posted a tip and demo database containing a sample of species, both plants and animals, categorized by their taxonomic rank (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, and genus). When you select the value “Animal” from the Kingdom combo box, the Phylum combo box is updated to only show Animal phylum. The Species list box is also filtered by your selection.
Access 2010 Programmer's Reference (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)
by Teresa Hennig, Rob Cooper, Geoffrey Griffith, and Jerry Dennison
Written by our long-time friends who are Microsoft MVPs and members of the Microsoft Access development team, Teresa Hennig, Rob Cooper, Geoffrey Griffith and Jerry Dennison wrote Microsoft Access 2010 Programmer's Reference, which also applies to Microsoft Access 2007.
Thanks to a special arrangement with the authors and their publisher, Wrox, we are pleased to offer a limited quantity of this book for FREE to purchasers of any of our Access product suites. A $45 value.
LinkedIn offers many opportunities for professionals to interact with each other. There are many groups available for the Microsoft Access, Azure, SQL Server, and Visual Studio .NET communities. Here are some of the vibrant groups we’ve discovered:
Data normalization is fundamental to database design. Properly normalized data makes it easy to support an application over time and simplifies the querying, displaying, and reporting features of an application.
Unfortunately, we don’t always receive or have normalized data. Tables that require adding fields as the data changes over time are particularly problematic and violate the basic premise of database design where adding records is free, but adding fields is expensive:
Here are some updated resources detailing the value of data normalization, including a sample database and VBA code to transpose and normalize your existing data.
Total Access Components 2010 Ships with 32 and 64 bit ActiveX Controls
Create dazzling forms with Total Access Components, the only collection of custom controls designed specifically for Microsoft Access.
With little or no code, add advanced menus, rotated text, bitmap animation, resizer and splitter bars, progress meters, gauges, dials, sliders, spin buttons, pop-up notes, Windows dialogs, clocks, fancy buttons, borders, rotated tabs, cursors, etc. A sample database includes examples of every control and how to customize them.
The 2010 version is rebuilt using C++ version 10 and supports both 32 and 64 bit platforms without having to make any changes to your forms or code.
Total Access Components 2010 supports Access 2000 through 2010. It includes a royalty-free distribution license and a deployment program to easily distribute it to your users. See all the new features and download the free trial version.
There are PDF reports of the error codes and descriptions, and a database containing a with each error code and its different descriptions access MSAccess versions 2010, 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000.
Here’s the detailed HTML page that lists every Microsoft Access 2010 error code with its description and for some of them, hyperlinks to resources that address the error and/or provide more information on the topic. Since this page is so large, please be patient while it loads.
This resources is part of our Microsoft Access Developer Help Center where you’ll find lots of other information to improve your skills. Hope this helps!
I’ve recently had several discussions with developers (not technology specific) about how they can be perceived as higher level professionals in enterprise environments.
One of the key steps is making sure you understand the larger needs of the organization. While it’s nice to create solutions quickly and on your own, IT managers look beyond the current solution or technology to see how it will be supported and enhanced over time. Developers who create solutions that do not follow industry or organizational standards are a risk. While it may be personally satisfying to do things on your own, that’s not a perspective shared or encouraged by organizations worried about what happens when you’re no longer available to help. After all, they can all of a sudden become responsible for your work and the next person may not be so pleased with your “creativity”.
It’s important to mitigate that risk by reaching out and using resources to help you be more productive. Adopt processes that address the long term requirements of a solution to support its entire life cycle. This begins with understanding best practices for creating solutions and avoiding common mistakes. Within the application, there should be consistent coding, error handling and commenting standards, the use of source code libraries or shared code across applications, etc. It should also include system documentation, version control, disaster recovery plans, quality assurance and test plans, deployment processes, etc. Issues of security, reliability, scalability, and maintainability become more and more important as your solution becomes more successful.
We at FMS face these issues all the time, which directly resulted in the creation of many of our commercial products. Professional developers in enterprises use lots of 3rd party tools to be more productive. Take advantage of what we have to offer so your organization addresses these critical needs at a fraction of the cost of you building it yourself. In fact, using industry products and standards makes you more of a professional, not less.
Here are some resources that can help Microsoft Access developers get to the next level:
Enterprise organizations understand the investment that’s necessary to support their solutions and professionals because the work is so valuable and mistakes so expensive. For your personal growth, it’s important to spend time learning on your own whether it’s through online resources or books. Learning from others is the next level which can be in person and through online groups. Formal training can also help. Hiring consultants for their specific expertise can be quite useful in bringing in new ideas and solutions, and teaching you additional skills and best practices. Finally, products that can leverage your knowledge and skills, or automate manual steps, have a tremendous return on investment both short-term and long-term. Take advantage of all these resources for your own sake and because other professional are.
Geoff Hollander of Northwest Database Services and the Portland Access User Group wrote a review of our Total Access Analyzer product. He provides a nice discussion of how it finds ways to improve his Access applications:
“I always thought that I was thorough about going through an application and cleaning up loose ends, but Total Access Analyzer proved: I was wrong and I probably won’t call another application complete until Total Access Analyzer gives it the OK.”
He also suggests how the documentation it generates and its reports are a business opportunity:
“Selling a documentation package generated by Total Access Analyzer for your application is a great way to add a training-free, trouble-free and reasonably priced profit center to the work you are already performing!….Total Access Analyzer is a solid product that any Access developer should have in their toolbox; and one that will pay for itself in short order.”
Ever wonder what changed between your database versions or the difference between two similar objects or tables? Total Access Detective is the premier program to detect differences between Microsoft Access databases, objects, code, and data.
Available as a Microsoft Access add-in, Total Access Detective lets you easily find differences between objects in your currently opened database. Easily find changes in your table and field definitions, object properties, controls, report sections, embedded macros, regular macros, modules, and data. The results are available to you in reports and on screen which can be copied or exported.
You can also compare any two databases to easily find exactly how they changed. Your databases can be an ACCDB, MDB or ADP database format. The new version lets you create separate databases for each comparison so you can easily manage multiple databases and changes over time.
We’ve added many new features to make Total Access Detective more powerful than ever.
Manually comparing databases for design and data differences is prone to error. Discover why so many Microsoft Access professionals rely on Total Access Detective to improve their productivity by quickly identifying the changes in their work.
In Microsoft Access, a common need is to have multiple combo boxes or list boxes on a form, and to have the selection in one combo box limit the choices in a second combo box or listbox. For example, consider an Address form containing State and City lookups. When you select a state, you want the list of cities list to be limited the selected state.
by Teresa Hennig, Rob Cooper, Geoffrey Griffith, and Jerry Dennison 
Microsoft Azure and SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server
I’ve recently had several discussions with developers (not technology specific) about how they can be perceived as higher level professionals in enterprise environments.
