Quick Queries #17
By Richard Rost
2 years ago
Avoid Beginner Mistakes, Align Forms, Chart Tips, More
Welcome to another TechHelp Quick Queries video brought to you by Access Learning Zone. I am your instructor, Richard Rost. Quick Queries videos are for me to answer your questions that may not need a whole video themselves. In today's video...
Topics Covered
- Importance of not starting a major project as a beginner in Access
- Learning the basics of Access before starting an end project
- Introduction to relationships and combo boxes in Access
- Creating simple practice databases for learning
- Aligning and drawing lines in Access forms and reports
- Differences between line drawing tools in Access and other Office tools
- Limitations of border control properties in Access
- Using layout view to specify gridlines in Access
- Custom control and design of forms in Access
- Setting up and using the quick launch toolbar in Access
- View code button function in Access
- Discussion on offline storage needs versus online services
- Billing date storage solutions in Access
- Modern charts in Access and their limitations compared to classic charts
- Using VBA code to control form and report appearances in Access
- Understanding kernel32 and its use in Access through DLL
- Discussion on the position memory of reports in Access
- Customizing the appearance of forms and reports through VBA in Access
Previous Quick Queries
Keywords
TechHelp, Access 2016, Access 2019, Access 2021, Access 365, Microsoft Access, MS Access, MS Access Tutorial, #msaccess, #microsoftaccess, #help, #howto, #tutorial, #learn, #lesson, #training, #database,, importing data,enhancing forms,Quick Launch Toolbar,VBA Editor,local data storage,database performance,kernel32 DLL functions,customizing reports,VBA,drawing lines on forms,vertical lines in reports,field borders,layouts,stacked layout,grid line properties,border customization,VBA code editing,quick launch toolbar customization,online data storage,performance analysis tool,using kernel32 in Access,report sizing with VBA,Access charts,modern charts in Access,Access tutorial for beginners,intermediate Access tutorial,Access database management,Access forms and reports,custom VBA functions
Intro In this video, I answer a variety of Microsoft Access questions from viewers, including advice for beginners on importing data, tips for drawing and customizing lines and borders in forms and reports, using the Quick Launch toolbar for faster navigation, working offline instead of relying on cloud services, ideas for tracking billing dates with code, a discussion on modern charts, resizing the Windows taskbar, thoughts on the Performance Analyzer tool, what kernel32.dll is, and managing form and report positioning. If you have a question, you might hear it covered here or get ideas for your own projects.Transcript This is Quick Queries number 17. What's a quick query? Well, it's a video about all kinds of questions that I get every day that don't necessarily need a whole video all to themselves. So we try to tackle as many of them as we can. This is number 17. Do you have to go watch 1 through 16? Well, no, not really, but you should. Alright, let's get to it.
Here's one I get a lot, and this person is asking if they should import all of their customers and orders and everything. Now, after watching my blank template video, and this is something that I tell a lot of my beginner students, is don't focus on your end goal project when you're just starting to learn Access, because you're going to watch a few beginner lessons, you're going to learn a lot, you're going to be all excited, you're going to be, oh, I'm going to build my database now, and then you start building it, and then you watch a couple more lessons, and you get into the expert series with some relationships, and you learn a little bit of this. And you're like, oh, damn, I built that wrong. Now you go back and start all over and scrap what you built and do it again. So I always say wait until you've been, the mile marker that I use for my classes is my expert class, level three, because by then you've learned relationships and combo boxes and things like that. And that's really important for learning Access, those relationships. So if you're still a beginner, just do something for fun. I always tell people this. Make a baseball card database or whatever you're into, D&D character database or something like that when I was a kid. So just don't try to do your end project or whatever your business goal is after lesson one.
All right, give it a little bit, learn some more, and then you'll see, you'll get it. Just be patient. There's a reason why medical school isn't one semester. The more you learn, the more you're like, man, I wish I would have learned this first. This is a comment I get a lot because when it comes to drawing lines on forms and reports, I don't use the keyboard shortcuts. I know they exist. I've been teaching this stuff for a while. I always forget about it, though. And it's an annoying thing in Access because it doesn't work the same as the other ones. Like in Word and Excel and PowerPoint, the line design tools work differently. For example, you can insert a line in Word or Excel, where it shapes and then lines, then if you start drawing it and you realize, oh, I really want this to snap to a vertical line, you hold down the shift key at this point, it'll start snapping. It doesn't work that way in Access. If you click and start drawing the line, and at this point here, if I realize, oh, I wanna hold the shift key down, it doesn't do anything at this point. Neither does control, nor does alt.
Alright, and then you get a crooked line. What you can do, come here, delete. What you can do is, if you hold the shift key down before you click the line tool, holding shift key down right now, click the line tool, then come down here and click and drag, that'll stay straight. And you can barely see it. It'll flash once in a while. It's not thick enough. Another one of my Access peeves. Right there, it will get a straight line. OK, so yes, yes I'm aware that this trick works in Access, but it's close to useless. I just do my best to draw it by hand. So I wish they'd give Access the same features that they give the other Office applications, but I could go on for hours about this. But yes, thank you very much for the comment.
In this video, I'm talking about putting vertical lines between the columns in a report. And Nick here mentions that he likes to use the field borders, the left, right, top, bottom field borders. Now in Excel, you can do that. You can't do that in Access. You can't control, I just want the bottom border or the top border. In Excel, you can come in here and say which borders you want. OK, I want the top, and I want thick bottom. You get those two borders. Once again, Access doesn't give you that option. If you're in Access, you want this guy here for example, you got border, that's it. You can do the border style, the border color, the border width, but it's the whole border all the way around.
Now, I know some of you are going to say if you're using layouts, you can change the top, bottom, left, right grid line of the layout. But personally, I hate using automatic layouts. I can't stand them. I didn't like them when they were released. I don't like them now. I never use them. If you want something like that, use Excel. I like the freedom that something like this gives me. But let me just show you an example of what I'm talking about.
All right. Let me make this form simpler. Let me delete all this stuff.If you've got a nice, real simple form like this, okay, let's apply a layout to it. Select all these, right-click, we're gonna go layout, and then stacked. Alright, you got that? It's automatically out. You can see the layout boxes around the whole thing. Right, this is now treated as one block of stuff. Okay, now let's say you want to take the last name and you want a top and bottom border on that. Well, if you come over here and you scroll down, you'll see these grid line properties here. Grid line style top, bottom, left, right, and you've got the grid line color and then you've got the width of it.
So, let's say you want a big top border. Change this from transparent to solid and change the top from one point to, I don't know, maybe three points and then you can change the color to whatever. Make it like reddish here. There. Okay. See what I got? You can change individual borders if you're using layouts. I don't like layouts. I've never liked layouts. Let's change this one to solid and let's go four points and blue. Actually, that was the bottom of this guy. So, you can see it's way down there. Okay? And yeah, you can make these smaller. I just, I never liked layouts. I don't like layout mode. I like this. I like the controls where I want them. I like to be able to move them around. I just find the layout modes that they have are just too limiting for me. I want to design my form exactly as I want it.
So, if that's the case, as you bring up, I like to make my own vertical lines or horizontal lines. If I want a bigger border around this thing, if I want a custom border, I'll just put little lines on here and make them custom and use VBA to control this thing. If I want a big bottom border on this phone number, I'll stick this here. I'm going to line it up as best as I can to that. And then you can just take this thing and make it red. Or do whatever you want. Right? They're your labels.
But now I got the same effect, but I got to do it with custom VBA and with shapes. So, it'd be nice if Microsoft added that features, that functionality that Excel has with these to access, but I've lived without it for 30 years. It's okay. I can, I really want that, I can make it. If you guys really want to see a video on how to do something like this, if you want like, you know, if this values something, instead of just conditionally formatting the back, you could put a custom border on it. So post a comment if you want to see me do something like that. You can use a square too or a rectangle tool. There's a whole bunch of different options. Okay, right, draw a box around it. Now you can modify this property. Format, shape, make it red, and thick. I mean, if you're going to do that, you might as well just use the border property. But if you want to, you know, whatever. You get what I'm saying.
Veg wants to know what button I'm pressing or typing so all the tables are showing again. I am assuming at time index 2126. I think what you're talking about is when I'm doing stuff like this. And that'll open up the code editor, and then I can just switch back over here. That's because I put buttons on my quick launch toolbar to switch back and forth between the VBA editor. And I always leave this open off to the side a little bit so I can just click back down here to go back to Access. But if I want that code window again, it's right there. And this is just on the quick launch toolbar. It's nothing fancy. Just open up this, go to where are you at? More commands, duh, brain fart, and here it is. Or you can go to file options, whatever, quick launch toolbar, and I added the view code. There's a view code and there's a visual basic editor. You might have to go to all commands over here to find them. Visual basic editor just opens up the VB editor, wherever it happens to be. View code will view the code for that specific object. So if I am in the main menu, notice it's not always available. But if I'm in the main menu in design view and I click view code, it will view the code for the main menu. Right? If I come back over here and I'm in the customer form, I hit view code, it puts me in the customer form. OK? So that's what that is, the view code button. There's a keyboard trick for it too, but I don't remember what it is.
This user is basically talking about the fact that it's becoming very difficult to do anything without having to be online, without you having to have online storage or be connected to the web in some way. He says there's a lot of small businesses that don't need or want obtrusive nonsense that blocks work and makes no positive contribution. And for the most part, I agree. Back in the day, a company had their data and their database in their server in their office. And, you know, I always recommended having off-site backups, which you usually had to pay extra for in the days, you know, before the internet, or someone would take a tape, you know, a tape backup home with them on the weekends and swap them.So, what you may have lost was, you know, a week's worth of data. Nowadays, everything wants you to be online, everything's got to be a login to a web service, everything's a subscription. That's one of the reasons, actually one of the strong points of Microsoft Access that I like, is that you can have your database on your computer, you know, or on your network server with your employees. It doesn't have to be connected to the cloud. So it's a plus. You can, obviously, if you want to, connect it to an online SQL server and share it around the world, but you don't have to.
So yeah, I'm with you. I feel your pain. But what do you get there? In fact, one of the things that I'm redoing my beginner Word and Excel classes, and by default when you install Office, it wants you to save everything on OneDrive. No, I don't like that. I want to create a drive locally and put it in my local My Documents folder or whatever you have set up.
Now, I do use Google Drive and my normal Documents folder is in Google Drive, but that's because I do like the fact that those documents get synced to the cloud and they can be on all of my laptops and my desktop and my phone. But that's a whole separate story. That I chose to do. I get what you're saying, though, that all these companies are being very obtrusive trying to force you to do that. And if you're a beginner and you don't know any better, you don't realize your data is just up on Microsoft's server or Google's server or whatever. So, I get you, I feel you.
EasySpeak101 says that when running my "TechHelp" billing statements database, and he says when you do your monthly billing, you want to sometimes store that date in the database for administrative purposes so you can know when the billing was actually run. It's not always done on the first of the month. First falls on New Year's, you might do it on the third or the fourth. So what I would do is, when you actually print your statements, the button, this of course is going to require a little bit of code. I mean you could make a form where you manually type in, you know, this person was billed on whatever and just store the date. But you could also do it where whenever this form is printed, you could have it pop up a message box that says you want to mark this as the billing statement is done, save that in a billing statement table that's related to the customer, and then you'll know when you billed each one of your customers. Right? You could do it with like two or three lines of code.
If you guys want to see how to do that, post a comment down below and if more than a couple of people want to see it, I'll do a video on it. That's how this works. All right. Squeaky wheels get the grease.
Vincent wants to know when modern charts were added to Access. Vincent, I got to say first off, instead of posting a comment on one of my videos and waiting for me to answer, Google it. This is a very easy Google answer. Just Google when were modern charts added to Microsoft Access and it should give you the right answer, which I Googled it. I wasn't sure, two thousand nineteen is what I was told, but I'll be honest, modern charts are half-baked. They work kinda but they're not finished. There are good aspects to them, some bad aspects. I've made a couple of videos on it. I still use the old classic charts as they've just had more functionality and features and you can do stuff with them that you can't do with modern charts. Modern charts are going to be awesome once they're finished, and if Microsoft would give Access modern chart capability, like Excel has charting capabilities, then that would be really cool.
But yeah, they're still not there yet. But I'll be honest about charting. Anything that I want to make a complex chart, I will just do it in Excel. I'll have Access crunch the data and then take the summary of the data that I want to chart and then just drop it in Excel. Excel's charting capabilities are a thousand times better than Access. But if it's a simple bar chart, or a pie chart, or a line chart, yeah, Access can handle it just fine, even with the classic charts. You don't even need the modern charts.
But bottom line here is, I see people do this all the time. They post a question that they could very easily just Google, just Google it. Or Bing it if you're a Bing person. Or ask ChatGPT. Yeah, here's a Windows question. I know this is Access for queries, but so what? I'm throwing a Windows question in here. Zach, Dreamcast. I used to have a Dreamcast back in the day. I used to play Soul Calibur on it all the time. Zach wants to know if you can make the taskbar bigger on the bottom. No. In Windows 11, they removed that capability. In Windows 7, 10, whatever, it used to be possible, but it was actually annoying, but you could make it larger.If you had a big monitor, you could click and drag a make that passport to rose three rows but, uh... nope, can't. And I just verified to a disjointed and the little search for myself, can't do it. Well, the problem with windows and, uh... from my end for making videos is that they change the stuff every month, so the next Windows update, you might have that feature back, so I don't know. As of right now, I can't do it, so I don't think the Camp Shadow Dragon asks what my thought on the performance analysis tool is. My thoughts are, what my thought is. I don't like it. I never use it. It gives pretty much useless information, in my opinion. And I'm sure there's a developer at Access that spent a lot of time working on it. But I've never had it give me useful information. Sorry, I just, no. If something doesn't work right, I try to drill down and figure out how to make it work right or faster or whatever. You know, if a query is really slow, how can we make that query faster? Let's run it real quick. Let's run it on the TechHelp free template and see what it does. Let's give it a shot. I haven't run it on this database, so let's see here. Let's close that so it does it. Database tools, analyze performance. Let's pick all object types, select all, and hit okay and run it. Do it again. Okay, it's going through. Alright, let's see here. What kind of optimization notes do we get?
Well, the first thing it's trying to tell me is to save my application as an MDE file. MDE files have been gone since 2007, I think. So right there I can see that Microsoft hasn't put a lot of effort into updating this thing in forever. MDE files are the old Access 2003 and earlier format for your encrypted. Now it's ACC DE file. Contactee relate this table to others in the database. Relate this table, relate this table. What if I don't want to? I don't usually use global relationships. I don't. They don't work well with linked databases. There's just a lot of reasons why. I've got many, many videos on relationships and referential integrity and cascade deletes and all that stuff, and this stuff here just usually tends to confuse beginners. So mostly this is just all relationship stuff, uh... macro convert the visual basic no, I can't, uh... the open main menu macro that I have here needs to be a macro because I'm using a quick launch toolbar button for it. You can't do that with VBA, so there's a reason for that. See, it's giving me stuff that is not no, no. Now, if you have had some good results with the analyzer, let me know, uh... I've just never had it give me any good information. Maybe because I know what I'm doing and I built the database right from the beginning, but I find that it gives misleading information more than good stuff. So sorry, that's just my opinion. But I'd like to hear your thoughts and comments and stuff. I haven't taken it and run it on a bad database. You know what I'm saying? Like I haven't taken like a not well-built database that maybe a student or a client gave me and run the performance analyzer on it. So maybe that would be helpful. But as far as everything that I've built in the last 10-15 years, I can't see it being of any use. And if you follow my design tips from the beginning, you won't need it. All right, what's next? Is it D'Andre or D'Andre? I don't know.
Said this video's been out for 11 years and helped to pass the EDPM exam. I had to Google what EDPM exam was. I'm guessing it's the European Diploma of Pain Medicine. A doctor of some kind. Congratulations on passing your exam. I'm glad that I can help. I'm not sure why access is a requirement for anything in medicine, but okay. Great. Awesome. And the point to make here is that access really has not changed much since 2007. That was the last major revision. So, you know, all the stuff that is, that's one of the reasons why I haven't made it a top priority to re-record all my older lessons because it's pretty much the same stuff. Just, you know, some minor interface differences. They call memos long text now. Images are handled a little bit differently, but I put notes on all my classes where something has changed that is a big deal. And there's not a lot of that. So, you know, the core of Access is the same as it's been since I can remember.
Let's head over to my forums on my website. Ludwig wants to know what exactly is kernel32 and what does it do? You'll see me refer to this in some of my programs like right here. If you look in the TechHelp free template, I declare this subroutine called sleep and it uses this thing called kernel32. What is that? Well, that's a DLL file. It stands for Dynamic Linked Library. Basically, it comes with Windows. It's part of Windows. And it's got functions in it like sleep, which puts the computer to sleep for x number of milliseconds. It's got other functions to let you get the computer name, the network name, all kinds of stuff. It's all Windows system level functions.Now, so that the people who made Access, or Office in general, don't have to rewrite all of these functions, they can just go out to Windows and say, "Hey, you've got this thing called kernel32 and it's got the code that I need to be able to, you know, put the computer to sleep or to get the computer name. So why don't I just use your code instead of having to redo it all myself?" So as long as you know it, know what the name of it is and know what file it's in, right, you can declare, you can tell Access, "Hey, go out and basically use that function that's found in that kernel32.dll file that came with Windows." And that's it. That's basically all you can do. And I wrote a little more detail, whatever, here. If you want to read it, pause, and there you go. So, I hope that answers your question.
One more for today. Michael mentions that in my Eclipse Timer 2 video, I talk about moving and sizing a report in VBA code. He found a simple way to do it. Just go to design view, click the report header, drag the report where you want it, and then return to print preview, and it looks like it will stay. Yeah, it'll stay most of the time. So with forms, right, if you open up a form and it opens up over here and you don't want it over here, you can slide it over here and hit save. Okay, control S on the keyboard and then close it and then when you open it up again, it'll open up in the same spot and it usually is pretty good about remembering where you left it. There, save it, close it, open it, goes right back to that spot.
Alright, reports don't usually tend to do that. Here's a report. Okay, I'm going to move you over here now and hit save and then close it and then open it up again and it's back where it originally was. Now, what Michael is saying is, yeah, you can sometimes go into design view, move it over here, hit save, close it and it should open up in that spot and it does most of the time. I would say nine times out of ten probably. But every now and then it snaps back where it originally was. Why? I don't know. But usually, yeah, if you go into design view with a report, alright, and set whatever dimensions you want. Let's say you want it to be like this, okay, and then save it and then close it and then open it. And see? It snapped back over here again.
It's not 100 %. Put it over here. Let's try this. Let's see. Put it over here. Design view. Let me save it now and then make it a little bit... Oh, I lost it. Come here. Come back here. Come here. Let me make it a little bit wider and then save and then close and then open. And you see it's here, but it's not saving its dimensions either. Let me try this. Save. No. No.
With VB code, you can control exactly where this is, how, you know, the parameters of the size of it, the zoom ratio, all that stuff, and that actually came up in another forum discussion about a call two months ago and I put some code right here you can see. Here you just, not refreshed, then you do an open report, right, with preview, then you do a move size command, okay, the move size will move the report to wherever you want it, the coordinates on the screen and the height and width, and then you do a do command run command and then AC zoom 100. And I believe I did cover this in a TechHelp video.
Hang on, let me see if I can find it. Oh, duh, the video I covered it in was the Eclipse timer video, where I make up the Eclipse timer report thingy. Alright, let me do the zoom, and then it comes in where we want it to zoom to. Let me see. Yeah, let me get this. It positions it where it's supposed to be and then zooms into the right size.
But yeah, you can try doing it this way, but that doesn't work all the time and you can't get the control that you want. So, oh well. But thanks for the feedback, of course. Alright, that's going to do it. That's it for quick queries today. I hope you learned something. Live long and prosper, my friends. I'll see you next time. And if you've got a question, post it down below. Post it in the thing. If you're on YouTube, I try to go through those. I'm way backlogged on those. You've got a better chance of getting your question answered if you post it on the forums on my website, because my moderators are awesome and they answer questions a whole lot more often than I do. And yeah, so do it there. Bye!Quiz Q1. What does the presenter suggest beginners should do when starting to learn Access?
A. Begin working on their end goal project immediately.
B. Create a complex database such as a customer and order management system.
C. Start with a simple, fun project like a baseball card or D&D character database.
D. Watch the expert classes only and skip beginner lessons.
Q2. According to the video, when is a good time to start working on your serious project in Access?
A. As soon as you watch the first beginner lesson.
B. After completing the expert class, level three.
C. Before learning about relationships and combo boxes.
D. Once you have watched the blank template video.
Q3. What limitation does Access have compared to other Office applications like Word or Excel regarding line drawing in forms and reports?
A. Lines drawn in Access can be easily snapped to vertical or horizontal by using the shift key after the line starts.
B. Access uses the same line design tools as Word and Excel.
C. Access does not allow straight lines to be drawn without initially holding the shift key.
D. You can freely modify the line thickness and visibility in Access without any issues.
Q4. What is the presenter's opinion about using Access for border controls in forms?
A. Prefer to use Access over Excel for detailed border customizations.
B. Use layouts since they provide easy customization for borders.
C. Dislikes using layouts and prefers full control, using lines and VBA for custom designs.
D. Recommends using default border styles provided in Access without modifications.
Q5. What shortcut does the presenter use to switch between Access and the VBA editor?
A. Customizes the toolbar to add a button for quick switching.
B. Uses a default shortcut provided by Access.
C. Access does not allow quick switching; a restart is necessary.
D. Keeps the VBA editor on a separate screen.
Q6. How does the presenter advise his students or viewers to save their Office files?
A. Strongly promotes saving all files to OneDrive for cloud backup.
B. Recommends always using local storage like My Documents for saving files.
C. Advises saving files in Access databases only.
D. Prefers storing files on external drives only.
Q7. When were modern charts added to Microsoft Access according to the video?
A. 2008
B. 2015
C. 2019
D. They have not been added yet.
Q8. What is the presenter's approach to designing Access forms with specific border needs?
A. Strongly prefers using automated layouts for simplicity.
B. Designs forms manually, adding custom VBA and shapes for unique border styles.
C. Relies solely on the in-built border properties of Access.
D. Uses external tools to design forms before importing into Access.
Answers: 1-C; 2-B; 3-C; 4-C; 5-A; 6-B; 7-C; 8-B
DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks.Summary In today's Quick Queries video, I'm addressing a series of questions that I commonly receive from students, which typically don't require a full tutorial to answer. This is episode number 17, and while you don't have to go back and watch all the previous ones, I'd recommend it – there's a lot of good material there.
A frequent question is whether you should import all your customers, orders, and data right away when starting a new Access database after watching the blank template lesson. My advice is, if you're just beginning to learn Access, don't immediately try to tackle your entire end goal project. It's common to be excited after the first few lessons, dive into building your ambitious project, and then discover after progressing through more advanced topics (like relationships and combo boxes) that you built things incorrectly and need to start over. My benchmark for when to start that big project is after completing my Expert Level 3 class, which covers key concepts such as relationships. These are fundamental for understanding how Access works. In the meantime, I encourage beginners to create a database just for fun, such as for baseball cards or D&D characters – something low-stakes to help you practice the basics without the pressure of "getting it right" for business needs. Be patient with yourself. There's a reason professional programs aren't taught in just one semester. The more you learn, the more you'll realize you wish you had known certain things from the start.
Another question I regularly receive concerns drawing lines on forms and reports. I often get asked about keyboard shortcuts to straighten lines, similar to how Word, Excel, and PowerPoint handle them. In Access, if you start drawing a line and want to snap it straight by holding Shift, as you would in other Office applications, it just doesn't work the same way. To get a perfectly straight line in Access, you have to hold down the Shift key before selecting the line tool, then draw your line. This works, but honestly, I find it a bit clumsy and usually just try to draw as straight as I can. It would be great if Access had the same robust shaping and alignment tools as the other Office programs.
Another common topic involves putting vertical lines between columns in a report. Some people mention using border properties in Excel, where you can individually format the top, bottom, left, or right borders of a cell. Unfortunately, Access doesn't offer that level of control. When working outside a layout in Access, the border property affects the entire control. If you're using layouts (which I personally avoid because they feel restrictive), you can adjust individual border lines through specific grid line properties. Still, most of the time, I prefer the freedom of arranging controls exactly how I want. For special visual effects, I'll manually add line or rectangle shapes or use VBA for more customization, but I agree it would be nice if Access offered more border formatting options similar to those in Excel.
A recent question was about how I quickly switch between the VBA code editor and Access. I make use of buttons on the Quick Launch toolbar – specifically, I add the "View Code" and "Visual Basic Editor" buttons so I can switch easily. The "View Code" button will open the code for the currently selected form or report, while the "Visual Basic Editor" brings up the editor window itself. This trick saves a lot of time when working between Access and VBA.
Another concern was about the increasing need to be online for most business software. While today's software frequently pushes you to use cloud storage and online services, Access remains a great option for those who want to keep their databases local, either on their own computer or a private network server. While you certainly can connect an Access front-end to an online SQL Server if you want, you are not required to, which is becoming an increasingly rare feature among major software packages.
I received a question about storing the date when monthly billing statements are generated. If you want to keep a record of when each batch of statements is created, you can handle this with a simple form and a few lines of code. For example, you could have the code prompt you to confirm storing the billing date each time you print statements, and then save that date to a related table for each customer. If there's interest, I'm happy to make a dedicated video on how this can be done.
Another query came in about when modern charts were added to Access. The answer is 2019, but I would recommend just Googling simple software history questions like this. As for modern charts in Access, they are still a work in progress. I prefer the classic charting tools in Access because they have better features and reliability. For complex charts, I recommend using Excel, as its charting features are far superior to anything Access currently offers.
On a Windows-related note, someone asked if you can make the taskbar bigger in Windows 11, as was possible in earlier versions. As of now, that feature is no longer available in Windows 11. This may change in a future update, but at the moment, you can't resize the taskbar vertically.
I was also asked my opinion on Access's Performance Analyzer tool. To be honest, I rarely use it. In my experience, it doesn't provide helpful or up-to-date guidance, especially considering it still references outdated file formats like MDE. The suggestions it provides, particularly about relationships and macros, often aren't relevant to modern best practices, especially if you know how to design a database correctly from the start. I haven't tested it on poorly built databases, so there might be cases where it's helpful for troubleshooting someone else's bad design, but I generally don't find it useful.
I had another comment from a student who mentioned that Access helped them pass a professional exam overseas. Congratulations on passing your exam! The core features of Access really haven't changed much since the 2007 version, which is why most of my older tutorials are still perfectly relevant. There have been some minor terminology and interface changes, but the main concepts remain constant.
From the website forums, one question was about kernel32. This is a Windows system DLL file containing a lot of low-level functions, like "sleep" (to pause execution) or routines to retrieve system information. By referencing kernel32, Access (or any Office application) can call these built-in Windows functions without needing to reinvent the wheel, allowing your Access applications to interact at the system level.
To wrap up, there was a tip shared about moving and sizing reports. With forms, Access is generally good about remembering the last position and size when you save and close. Reports are not as consistent. Sometimes they remember their new position, other times they snap back to their original. For reliable control over placement and size, use VBA's MoveSize command to specify coordinates and dimensions directly, along with any zoom level you might need. This method gives you much more precision than manual adjustments.
That concludes this installment of Quick Queries. I hope you found the information useful. If you have a question, the best way to get an answer is to post on the forums on my website, where you'll get help even faster from the great moderators we have there. You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.Topic List Advice for Access beginners on importing data
Importance of learning relationships before complex projects
Access drawing tools vs Word and Excel line tools
Drawing straight lines in Access forms and reports
Using Shift key with line tool in Access
Limitations of border formatting in Access reports
Using layouts for grid line customization in Access
How to set top and bottom borders in Access layouts
Changing grid line color and width in layouts
Drawbacks of using automatic layouts in Access
Manually adding custom borders with lines and VBA
Using rectangle and square shape tools for borders
Adding VB/VBA editor commands to Quick Access Toolbar
Difference between View Code and Visual Basic Editor buttons
Commentary on cloud requirements for business data
Storing databases locally vs using online storage
Access billing database tip: storing billing dates
Triggering billing date storage with VBA on print
Modern charts in Microsoft Access
Comparison of classic and modern charts in Access
Why use Excel for complex charts instead of Access
Windows 11 limitation: resizing the taskbar
Opinion on the Access Performance Analyzer tool
Demonstration of running the Performance Analyzer
Critique of Performance Analyzer recommendations
Explanation of kernel32.dll and Windows API calls
Declaring and using Windows API functions in Access VBA
Moving and sizing forms and reports with VBA MoveSize
Behavior of forms and reports saving position and size
Controlling zoom and positioning in reports with VBA |
