Microsoft Access combo boxes let you display data for users to select values from predefined lists. Using them effectively simplifies data entry and accuracy.
Brush up on the ComboBox Basics from Microsoft, and check out our Top Five Tips for using Combo Boxes on Microsoft Access forms. Each of them has articles describing them in more detail.
To use combo boxes effectively, learn about the following properties:
* LimitToList: Set this property to Yes to prevent values that are not in your list. * AutoExpand: Set this property to Yes to automatically select a matching value in the list as you type. * ListRows: Set this value to a high value so that the drop down shows as many list items as space allows.
Use the following syntax to automatically select the first item in a ComboBox when the form loads, or when the value of another control on the form changes:
On a form with multiple ComboBoxes, you may want to make the selection in one ComboBox limit the choices in another ComboBox. To do this, add code to the “AfterUpdate” event of the first control that updates the RowSource property of the second control.
Microsoft’s SkyDrive service has offered everyone a free 25GB hard disk in the cloud. This lets you store your files, backups, and even share files with others. It’s an amazing free offer that we’ve mentioned in the past.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has just reduced the free amount to 7 GB. That’s still generous, is more than Apple’s iCloud, and is what’s offered to new customers. For a limited time, any registered SkyDrive user *who has uploaded files to SkyDrive* as of April 22nd can opt in to keep 25GB of free storage while still getting all of the benefits of the new service.
So, if you already have a SkyDrive account, they are letting you keep your 25GB disk but you need to claim it.
Simply log into your SkyDrive account at skydrive.com with your Microsoft’s Windows Live credentials. On the bottom left of your account page, and click on the “Manage Storage” link. You’ll see a listing of storage plans, and under “SkyDrive Free” a button that says “Free upgrade!”
Not familiar with SkyDrive? In addition to being a hard disk in the sky, SkyDrive also has software you can install on your device (PC, Mac, mobile) and keep folders in sync. Here’s an overview of the new features from CBS Moneywatch: Microsoft gets cloud storage right with new SkyDrive
We are often asked by Microsoft Office power users whether, why, and when they should use Microsoft Access versus Microsoft Excel. Especially when they are very comfortable using MS Excel and don’t understand the reasons why anyone would use MS Access or databases. We’ve written a new paper that describes the issues in detail:
How Microsoft Access and Excel Empower Information Workers
Software System to Manage Impact Aid Suvey Forms for Department of Education Funding
See how our Microsoft Access database application is helping the Washington DC Public System (DCPS) more efficiently and accurately secure their Impact Aid funding from the US Department of Education.
What is Federal Impact Aid for Primary and Secondary Education?
Many local school districts across the United States include within their boundaries parcels of land that are owned by the Federal Government or that have been removed from the local tax rolls by the Federal Government, including Indian lands. These school districts face special challenges — they must provide a quality education to the children living on the Indian and other Federal lands and meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, while sometimes operating with less local revenue than is available to other school districts, because the Federal property is exempt from local property taxes.
The Impact Aid law (now Title VIII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) has been amended numerous times since its inception in 1950. The program continues, however, to support local school districts with concentrations of children who reside on Indian lands, military bases, low-rent housing properties, and other Federal properties, or who have parents in the uniformed services or employed on eligible Federal properties. The law refers to local school districts as local educational agencies, or LEAs.
To secure this funding, school districts send survey forms to their students’ parents, collect the results, and submit the claim to the Department of Education.
Helping the Washington DC Public School System Process their Federal Impact Aid Survey Forms and Secure Funding
As you can imagine, the federal government has a lot of workers and property in Washington, DC that don’t pay local property taxes to fund education.
The Washington DC Public Schools (DCPS) consists of over 100 public elementary and secondary schools and learning centers. Each year DCPS sends out survey forms to determine the residential and parental employment status of their students. This information is used to determine Impact Aid funding for students who live or have parents who work on federal property.
Database Software Solution
By automating a process that was previously performed manually, FMS helped DCPS achieve increased efficiency and accuracy with an easy-to-use, easy-to-deploy, and easy-to-support, multiuser Microsoft Access application.
Professionally designed and deployed, FMS created reports and processes to help DCPS identify a larger number of federally connected families, and file the forms to obtain federal funding.
Results
The application increased funding which more than paid for our services and allows DCPS to devote more resources to their classrooms. The payoff will continue year after year.
Let us know if your school systems could benefit from claiming these Impact Aid funds with our database application.
Microsoft Access Database Documentation and Analysis
300 Ways To Create Better Microsoft Access Applications
FMS is pleased to announce Total Access Analyzer 2010 is now shipping with support for both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Microsoft Access 2010. Total Access Analyzer is the world’s most popular Microsoft Access product winning every Best Access Add-in Award since 1994. This is the tenth major release of Total Access Analyzer since its debut in 1992.
Comprehensive Microsoft Access Database Documentation
Total Access Analyzer examines each Microsoft Access database to provide detailed documentation of individual objects and their relationships to each other. Comprehensive code analysis of VBA module code and macros is also performed. A powerful search features lets you find any string across all the properties, macros, and modules. Over 375 presentation quality reports are available with a wide variety of customization, sorting, and filtering options.
Avoid Crashes Before You Ship
The popularity of Total Access Analyzer is its ability to help Access users and developers improve their applications, avoid errors that can cause their solutions to crash, and learn best practices to increase their skills. By using Total Access Analyzer to take over an existing application, during development, and before deployment as part of one’s quality assurance process, developers can avoid embarrassing mistakes and improve consistency and performance.
Most importantly, Total Access Analyzer detects 300 ways to avoid errors, apply best practices, and improve performance. By leveraging our years of experience and customer feedback, FMS has created the most powerful system for diagnosing Microsoft Access applications. For instance, Total Access Analyzer can detect broken references to tables, fields, forms, reports, macros, and VBA code that will cause the database to crash as soon as they’re encountered. It finds unused objects (tables, queries, forms, and reports), macros, classes, procedures, variables, constants, etc. to help developers get rid of unnecessary and old work.
Advanced analysis is also performed to detect inconsistent field definitions across tables, duplicate SQL definitions, macro command problems, etc. Multi-level object and code relationships are presented with three advanced hierarchical diagrams showing application flow, data flow, and object containership.
Microsoft Access users, developers, and consultants of all levels rely on Total Access Analyzer to deliver great solutions. “Total Access Analyzer is an amazing product that I’ve relied on and recommended for years,” said Sal Ricciardi Programming Writer for Microsoft Corporation. “It’s a huge time saver.”
Total Access Analyzer 2010 adds many enhancements in addition to supporting both 32 and 64 bit versions of Microsoft Access 2010. Its VBA module code parser now supports the conditional compiler syntax (e.g. #If VBA7 Then) that’s common for supporting 32 and 64 bit environments. There’s advanced macro documentation and analysis that includes a “macro compiler” to validate if macro commands have the proper number of parameters. Improved views and reports simplify the review and printouts of macro lines scattered in embedded macros across the forms and reports. New temporary variable analysis documents and detects undefined and unused TempVars set by macros and modules. A variety of other new suggestions were added to detect timer event inconsistencies, query performance enhancement opportunities, and reserved word conflicts with the upcoming SQL Server 2012. With all the new features, Total Access Analyzer remains the most powerful diagnostic tool for Microsoft Access databases.
“Total Access Analyzer provides the comprehensive documentation and analysis that empowers Access users and developers to takeover existing Access applications and enhance them,” said Luke Chung, President and founder of FMS. “Total Access Analyzer offers a cost-effective way to understand what’s going on in a database, detect errors, improve quality, and learn Best Practices. It should be part of the quality assurance process during development and certainly before shipping. If it doesn’t pass Total Access Analyzer’s review, it’s not ready for deployment. It’s fundamental to our own Access development efforts.”
Availability and Pricing
Total Access Analyzer 2010 is available immediately from FMS for $299. Existing owners of Total Access Analyzer can upgrade for only $199. Total Access Analyzer is available via ESD and also comes with a professionally printed user manual and CD.
When working with ComboBoxes and ListBoxes, we often find the need to select the first item in the list by default. This can be done when the form loads, or when the rowsource values of the ListBox or ComboBox are changed.
We’ve written a new paper containing an explanation and sample database of how to do this with the ItemData(0) property.
Our example database contains a form with a ComboBox containing ProductCategoties, and a ListBox containing Products.
When the form loads, it selects the first Category in the list. When the Category is changed, the Products list is updated, and the first product is selected.
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.
The site is the world's largest collection of public case studies for entrepreneurial women. It is a community where women can learn from the experiences of other women addressing their businesses, family and personal challenges.
The revamped website is built on Visual Studio .NET, SQL Server with a modern, dynamic interface incorporating our technical and graphic artist resources.
Contact us if we can help you with a similar solution.
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.
Microsoft Access combo boxes let you display data for users to select values from predefined lists. Using them effectively simplifies data entry and accuracy.
Microsoft’s SkyDrive service has offered everyone a free 25GB hard disk in the cloud. This lets you store your files, backups, and even share files with others. It’s an amazing free offer that we’ve mentioned in the past.
For a more detailed description and video of how it’s used, see Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky explain the exciting new features and vision:
Helping the Washington DC Public School System Process their Federal Impact Aid Survey Forms and Secure Funding
Database Software Solution
by Teresa Hennig, Rob Cooper, Geoffrey Griffith, and Jerry Dennison