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  Welcome To Access Unlimited - Edition 23
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Access Unlimited is an email newsletter that provides free tips, help and information for skilled Microsoft Access users and related software disciplines.

Produced by Garry Robinson from Sydney, Australia.

In this edition, 

PAGE FORMATING OF REPORTS IN ACCESS 2000 BUG
SEVEN PERFORMANCE HINTS FOR COMBO AND LIST BOXES
ACCESS SECURITY - LAST EDITIONS WINNERS OF The Toolbox
GOOD READING AND USEFUL SITES

This edition includes a lot more contribution from readers.  These readers were rewarded with copies of the offline resource eBook  "The Toolbox".  I hope you enjoy these resources on Access Security, Combo Boxes and lots more great links in the Good Reading section.   Let me know what you think of the layout and content.


Sponsors
http://www.apress.com     http://vb123.com#software

~~~  NO MORE  PARTIAL MENUS  ~~~
  
If you are using Office 2000 and do not enjoy those mysterious partial menus, here is how to get rid of them manually.

Go to Menu  Tools/Customize/Options/   
and uncheck the box 'Menus Show Recently Used Commands First'


~~~   SEVEN PERFORMANCE HINTS FOR COMBO AND LIST BOXES  ~~~

This article at vb123.com has many good reminders for those of you who rely on Combo boxes and List boxes and have performance issues with their Access database.  These include the following performance reducers
  
  Using an SQL statement instead of a Query
  Keeping unnecessary fields in the RowSource
  Using Linked tables
  No Indexing
  Using a Number field instead of Text When Using AutoExpand
  Leaving AutoExpand On
  Using Multiple-table RowSource


For the full article head to
http://vb123.com/Toolbox/01_access/combos.htm

This Article by Sandeep Anand of Mata Technologies. Visit http://www.matatechnologies.com/ for FREE Code, Tips and Tricks on MSAccess and more.


~~~ DATA MINING / GRAPHING  SOURCE CODE ~~~

If you are interested in technology that shows the drilldown and multi data-source graphing process in Access, why not consider the

"GR-FX Programmers Pack"
 
which has been upgraded to include not only all the source code for the popular Graf-FX graphing tool plus some new programming objects.   Graf+FX also includes a new mystery query process which I am calling remote queries. 

http://www.gr-fx.com/graf+fx.htm
 
This now can be purchased as a standalone library package for only US$75
http://vb123.com/orders/



~~~ WIN A COPY OF The Toolbox  ~~~

What I am interested in this time is the web sites that programmers are using to find programming material on the web.  To win "The Toolbox", you must list 2 or 3 sites and explain what you use them to search for.  The web addresses should be the search page on that site.  I am not interested in web sites that do not have search facilities or only a few pages of content. 

For example, one of my favorite sites is  www.codehound.com/vb    because this always seems to come up with web pages that are relevant to programming with objects such ADO and Office Automation.  

So send in your favorite programming search sites and tell us all why and you could win a copy of
The Toolbox.  -->  vb123.com/Toolbox  and a little  airplay in the next edition of Access Unlimited



~~~ Toolbox WINNERS FROM THE LAST EDITION~~~ 

Ed wanted to know where the Access Security Resources were on the web. The winners were rewarded with a free copy/upgrade of   www.gr-fx.com/Toolbox/

All the latest Access security links can be found at
http://www.vb123.com/Toolbox/links/access_security.htm

~~~
Garry Budin from the UK sent in these contributions

This ultimate Access Security page
http://support.microsoft.com/support/access/content/secfaq.asp

Open a secure Access database with Visual Basic
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q163/0/02.asp

Visual basic and Access security information
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q105/9/90.asp

Access Security and ODBC
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q209/1/20.asp

ASP and Access security
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q163/1/59.asp

HTML and Access security
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q161/1/72.asp



~~~

Phil Dixon sent these two sites 
 
http://www.elcomsoft.com/prs.html
 
A password recovery site.  You have to pay for this product but I can attest to the fact that it does work.  I password protected some Access and Excel files with long passwords.  Forgot them and was in deep trouble when I could not open my Access 97 genealogy file.  The reason for the protection was to keep the kids out.   :--(   Well, it also kept me out, to my deepest regret.  This software recovered the password and saved me mountains of hours and days to reconstruct my genealogy database.
 
http://www.pathcom.com/~crosu/homepage.htm
 
This AccLock.mde is also very useful, and works.  I also do work on sensitive projects that I do not want others to see, at the moment.  Both at work, and at home.  Some of the databases come with a lot of hard work and I prefer keeping an eye on them.
 
 
Best regards, and thank you for an excellent site and newsletter.
 
Phil Dixon   

ED likes the second link as there are quite a number of free coding examples for VBA, VBS, WSH and ASP


~~~ ANOTHER Toolbox WINNER  ~~~ 

Tony Rotondo from   http://tomatotechnologies.com.au/ had this to say

This is an extension of the tip from Jan 2001 ezine issue http://www.pinpub.com/

A tip that I have come across for avoiding the bloating of Access databases is
this.

Say for example you have a query that generates a substantial amount of rows, Access allocates space in the mdb to perform this query and then fails to de-allocate it when you close the database, you have to perform a repair and compact to recover that space.

A nifty way around this is to set the read property of the mdb file to read-only run the query, Access is forced to use the c:\windows\temp directory to perform the temporary calculations, and the integrity of your mdb is maintained. This is very surprising behaviour!

The code that Tony uses to set the read-write property of a database is as follows

' sets the current db to readonly
Public Sub SetReadOnly()
  SetAttr CurrentProject.Path & "\" & CurrentProject.Name, _
   vbReadOnly + vbArchive
End Sub

'sets the current db to read write
Public Sub SetReadWrite()
  SetAttr CurrentProject.Path & "\" & CurrentProject.Name, vbArchive
End Sub

~~~

Tony also says.  I enjoy reading your newsletter. I have noticed that everyone seems to be
quite negative about Access 2000.

One of the best things about A2K is deploying Access solutions to retail users. We used to Access 97 and had numerous installation problems on various users computers.

Our users have varying operating systems and hardware. For example our application has to run on Win 95, Win 98, Win NT, Win 2000, Win ME and all various versions of these, from Pentium 133's to 1Gig processors.

The A2K installation may be 150meg but it has eliminated 99.9 percent of installation problems for all sorts PC's. We have also found very little in the way of bugs in A2K. Anyway that's my 2 cents.

Ed's comments.  My enthusiasm to Access 2000 is muted but 10% of my jobs are in 2000 and 90% are in 97.   So I got to go with the flow or should I say the dough.

~~~



+++ Sandeep Anand and Owen Jenkins also won copies of The Toolbox for their contributions.
And the Access Security links page has now been updated with all the links


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GOOD READING AND USEFUL SITES

The Microsoft Access 97 FAQ page.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/access/content/faq/faq97.asp

The Microsoft Access 2000 FAQ page.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/access/content/faq/faq2000.asp

Bug Report for the SendObject command in Access 2000 and Outlook 
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q260/8/19.ASP

All the great free articles on Visual Basic from Pinnacles Visual Basic Developer
http://www.pinnaclepublishing.com/VB/VBmag.nsf/FreeTipsIndex!openform

Microsoft Access at cNet
http://www.help.com/cat/2/69/70/71/72/index.html

Some good Excel VBA sites
http://searchvb.techtarget.com/searchVB_Editors_Picks_Page/0,1947,4e6,00.html

Some good Access sites
http://searchvb.techtarget.com/searchVB_Editors_Picks_Page/0,1947,4e5,00.html

Microsoft.Net FAQ Page  - Some questions answered.   Check out the Garbage Collector.  That should get some use ...
http://www.microsoft.com/directaccess/products/netplatform/faq.asp

An Access Forum for getting answers to the those tough questions for free (sometimes)
http://pub17.bravenet.com/forum/show.asp?usernum=1437242448

Disable the shift key in Access using Access code
http://pub17.bravenet.com/forum/fetch.php?id=9530350&usernum=1437242448

Design features that you will expect to find in good eBooks
http://www.adobe.com/epaper/columns/pirouz/000214rp.html

Creating A Startup Disk For Your Computer
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsME/using/computerhealth/articles/startupdisk.asp

Some good Access resources
http://www.indiana.edu/~dms/databases/access/

-------------------------------------------------------
WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP

During the last week I notched up one hundred separate Access/Office programming projects.   This does not include numerous quick consults, selling of software and writing of computer articles.  Thinking back as to how I achieved this and I can ascertain that most of that business from "word of mouth".   How does the word get out ?  Do a good job and understand the subject matter.   So keep reading ezines, magazines & books and keep pushing push your knowledge to the next level.

An alternative thought for the day "For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. "  Hmmm !!!


Ed.   Garry Robinson


-- OUR SOFTWARE AND RESOURCES -----------------------
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So thanks for reading our popular newsletter.
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or maybe even contribute to the next edition.



Garry Robinson - Software Consultant


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Published  2001-03