Welcome To The Access Unlimited Newsletter - Edition 55
See all newsletters

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 (known below as "Ed") from Sydney, Australia.

In this edition
Are Your Users Running The Same Version of The Access Jet Engine?
The Hidden Index Option In Access
Office Security Updates
A Big Update To The Toolshed
The popular GOOD READING section once again.

Are Your Users Running The Same Version of The Access Jet Engine?

A user sent this note to me.

One other note that may save you some aggravation some day. In this same office I had a very stable database (two years with no problems) suddenly start getting corrupted, and wasn’t able to repair it using any tricks I knew (Repair menu item, import all objects into new db, decompile, etc). I traced the problem to a new machine that had a different version of Jet (I forget the exact versions, I think most machines were at Jet 4 sp6 and this machine came in with Jet sp7 or sp8). Every time the user on the newer machine was working on a record in a table that another user was in (different record, same table) that table would become un-repairable. As soon as I matched all the Jet versions I haven’t had a problem since. I haven’t seen this issue touched upon in the many articles/posts I have read about Access corruption, so I thought I would pass it along.

I enjoy the newsletter; I always find something new to chew on. Thanks for your time.

Peter Lake

ED’s Note: If you want to find out how to extract the version of Jet that you or your users are running, check out the function at the bottom of the follow page at vb123.com
Surveillance Of Microsoft Access Usage

Download the latest service packs for Jet from Microsoft Click Here

The Hidden Index Option In Access

Helen Fedemma wrote in the latest version of Access Watch

“While reading my new book, Expert One-on-One Microsoft Access Application Development, Garry Robinson (see my review of his Access Security book in Access Archon #120) wrote to point out that I didn’t mention that giving fields the suffix “ID” can result in an index automatically being created on that field, whether you want it or not.  The key field in a table will have an index, of course, but if the table also includes several foreign keys with names ending with ‘ID’, you probably don’t want indexes on them too, as extra indexes can cause the database to be bigger and slower than it would be otherwise.

You can delete redundant indexes in the Indexes window, opened by clicking the Indexes button for a table opened in design view.  To prevent this from happening in future, open the Options dialog and click the Tables/Queries tab.  There is a box labeled ‘AutoIndex on Import/Create’ with a list of the prefixes/suffixes that will trigger an auto-index; just clear the box and indexes will no longer be created automatically.

This is one of many useful tips on Garry’s Web site, http://www.vb123.com/.”

“You can find many more articles and tips at Access Watch”  Ed
http://www.woodyswatch.com/access/archives.asp

A user wrote this in after reading this piece.

Hi Gary,

Hope you are having a great season down-under :-)

I also didn't know about the auto-indexing of fields named with "ID." One naming convention I use, which takes care of this without me even knowing it -

I name the primary key with "ID", but foreign keys in the table I name with "REF" (replacing their own "ID" in the field name). I do this so that when I create a query, I can see quickly which is the "real" ID column. :-)

tblCompanies
CompanyID
CompanyName
tblContacts

ContactID
FName
LName
CompanyREF

Have a great day!

Heather

Office Security Updates

In case you haven’t noticed, there are updates for Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and a few other Office 2003 products. Go to the Office Downloads site and click Check for Updates to get the latest Office updates for your computer. 

A Big Update To The Toolshed

The Toolshed has been greatly improved in the last month as it now has all the downloads from Garry’s Book on Access security.

How To Change Startup Properties and Use Hotkeys
How To Manipulate Access Options and Attributes
Good Access Programming Practices
How to backup and recover your Access database
Surveillance Of Microsoft Access Usage
Menu and Toolbar Protection
Developer Workgroup Security Manipulation
Data Security and Database Passwords
Object Protection and Other Security Measures

Opportunities For Selling Our Software

Would you like to sell vb123.com software? If so then check out this page
http://www.vb123.com/orders/resellers.htm

GOOD READING

Adam Cogan discusses software versions for VB.net and also includes many other tips on coding that his company has adopted
http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulestoBetterCode.aspx

Find all the specific help from Access 97 for the Create and Alter Table queries that work with jet databases. This help is very hard to find in Access 2000 or later.
www.vb123.com/toolshed/99/createtables.htm

Lots of introductory Access help on this page
http://www.ehow.com/list_1014.html

Is Longhorn just Windows XP Service Pack 3 or something more? At least Longhorn will finally make the change so the users operate out of non Admin accounts as default.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1786137,00.asp

Graphically display graphs in Access reports
Visit page at Microsoft

Great little page on the Windows Picture Viewer
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119993,tk,wbx,00.asp

Interesting code to resolve the names of Command Bars in Frontpage page
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_fp2003_ta/html/OfficeFrontPageAccessCommands.asp

Windows security – build your own tool
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119277,00.asp

Tools in the beta of SQL Server 2005
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3489661
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3491006

Learn how to put Excel 2003 formulaes in SQL Server
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_xl2003_ta/html/Office_Excel_Mapping_XML_SQL_Server.asp

Storage security guidelines
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/continuity/features/article.php/3495281

WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP

One of the most fundamental requirements of running a business that is reliant on emails is that your emails actually reach the people whom you are trying to do business with. The following article looks at this very issue
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3498821

On another tack, part of the success of the vb123.com website is that you can send in your own ideas on a particular page and (eventually) we will review that idea and post the information where others can gain from your knowledge. We also welcome articles on topics related to our web site and we will post those on the web site.  Please send us your ideas before sending too much time on a topic. Note that with 3,000 visitors a day, your knowledge will be seen.  Anyway here are two good pages that show how your input will be viewed.

www.vb123.com/toolshed/05_access/accesssprotectionideas.htm
www.vb123.com/toolshed/links/pdfwriters.htm

So thanks for reading our popular newsletter.  Feel free to make comments, copy the email to a friend or maybe even contribute to the next edition. And if you can, have a look at our software by using the Marketing section on the left hand side of this newsletter. If you really like this newsletter, why not purchase The Toolshed and you will get all the other newsletters and plenty more in a developer’s knowledge base tool with super searching facilities.

Garry Robinson - Software Consultant and Author
GR-FX Pty Limited
Sydney, Australia.
Ph +61 2 9665 2871 Fax +61 2 9665 8448
Software Resources http://vb123.com/

 --- The end of this edition of Access Unlimited ---

PS Don’t forget Garry’s BRAND NEW Workbench 4… Shutdown your database, send messages to users, colored icons lots of other relevant stuff.

http://www.vb123.com/workbench/

Click on this button to read the previous edition of Access Unlimited 
Published  2005-03

Links >>>  Home | Search | Workbench | Orders | Newsletter | Access Security | Access professionals