A new feature in Microsoft Excel 2010 lets you insert tiny charts, or Sparklines, into worksheet cells. Sparklines are a powerful way to show a quick snapshot of data trends.
To insert a Sparkline:
For more details, read our Microsoft Excel tip article, Show Data Trends with Tiny Sparkline Charts in Microsoft Excel 2010.
Mercer Consulting, a global provider of human resources services, chose FMS to enhance an existing application for deployment to their multinational clients. See how they leveraged our commercial software development experience to create a professional quality solution with many enhancements including language localization:
“Although we had ambitious goals and increased the scope mid-stream, this was still one of the smoothest software development projects I’ve seen. FMS’s requirements gathering was flexible and efficient, with helpful quick prototyping to facilitate our decision making. The technical development work was always fast, creative but focused, and thoroughly tested….And project management was a breeze, with thorough monthly tracking and the project coming in ahead of schedule and under budget.”
Read more in our joint Case Study: Leveraging our Commercial Software Development Expertise.
Additional information on our Microsoft Access Development Services.
Here’s a video recorded by Voices of Innovation (VFI) at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference regarding cloud computing with FMS President Luke Chung.
Watch the video to see how the Cloud and IT innovation have driven growth and improved the businesses of Microsoft Partners.
Visit this link for additional FMS videos from conferences and other events.
In Access 2010 and 2007 databases (ACCDBs), the Attachment field type lets you attach files (documents, files, etc.) to records in your database. When you open the table in Datasheet view, the attachment fields display a paperclip as the column header.
Read our paper to learn how you you can Replace the Paperclip Icon of Attachment Fields with a Column Name in Microsoft Access Tables in ACCDB Databases.
Many people deploy Microsoft Access database applications and neglect to provide the system administration necessary to properly support and maintain them over time. This becomes critical as the data it contains grows and becomes mission critical. Often, when something goes wrong, IT “professionals” are brought in to discover basic system administration are not in place. Rather than blaming the people involved, the Microsoft Access technology is considered at fault. We can do better.
Here’s a response I recently provided related to this issue:
First, I hope you have a disaster recovery plan in place. You may want to read my paper, Creating a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan for Microsoft Access Database Applications for what we consider best practices.
Second, Access/Jet databases need to be periodically compacted to minimize corruption and bloat, and for optimal performance. The back-end database with the data is what needs to be compacted. You can do that manually. We created a commercial program, Total Visual Agent, that does it on a schedule with auditing and email notification if something goes wrong.
Third, if you are experiencing corruption after regular database maintenance, it’s often caused by a suspect connection/user who disconnects in an improper manner. That can be very difficult to detect and replicate. We have a commercial product, Total Access Admin, that monitors the people going in and out of an Access database, logs that activity, and flags the people who exit improperly. If it’s happening with the same person, there may be a hardware or network problem causing the corruption.
Finally, it may be possible that the corruption and performance problems are due to the front-end application. Bad code and techniques, corrupt objects, and other issues may be causing crashes and problems that lead to corruption. We address this in a few ways:
Overall, it’s about having a solid and repeatable process and checklist in place that evolves over time as new experiences are encountered.
Download the free preview of Total Visual CodeTools 2010 for Microsoft Office/Access 2010. The Preview Version is fully functional through the end of July 2011. Take advantage of this opportunity to see how Total Visual CodeTools can cleanup the code in your existing projects, let you deliver more robust solutions, and simplify your daily coding chores.
Integrated directly into the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Total Visual CodeTools gives you a rich set of tools to help you create, cleanup, and deliver better solutions. The latest version is enhanced for MS Office/Access 2010 and has many new features:
Visit these pages for:
Total Visual CodeTools supports all VB/VBA hosts, including Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6) and Office 2010, 2007, 2003, 2002/XP, and 2000.
The purpose of the SQL UNION query is to combine the results of two or more queries into a single result set. The list contains all the rows belonging to all the queries in the union. This applies to queries in SQL Server or Microsoft Access. A common question is whether to use the UNION or UNION ALL syntax.
The main difference between UNION ALL and UNION is that, UNION only selects distinct values and sorts the results, while UNION ALL selects all values (including duplicates) without sorting. Read our revised paper on UNION versus UNION ALL SQL Syntax to learn more about the differences, see some examples, and understand why you would use one versus the other.
For more tips and using queries, visit our Microsoft Access Query Help Center.
Here are some pictures from the Portland Access User Group Conference at Silver Falls State Park in May 2011. FMS President Luke Chung spoke at the conference which was his first experience attending this wonderful conference and location.
The Enterprise Features web site highlight’s FMS President Luke Chung’s discussion about why Microsoft Access is underrated and hated in large enterprise organizations. “Haters Gonna Hate”.
He discusses the dynamics of IT departments in large organizations and their natural conflict with the needs and budgets of information worker. 
He also shows how organizations that understand the strengths and weaknesses of Microsoft Access can leverage its power for competitive advantage, and how to structure service levels to do so.
Microsoft Access Queries are among the most powerful features of MS Access. We have created a new resource center to make it easy to review all our papers related to Microsoft Access Queries. These original works offer tips and techniques aren’t found anywhere else. They will help you maximize your use of Microsoft Access queries to better analyze and understand your data.
In the Microsoft Access Query Help Center you will find papers covering:
Let us know what additional related topics you’d like us to add in the future.