Fixes or workarounds for recent issues in Access

Access crashes and slow performance Error: “Automatic configuration of the current version of Microsoft Access has failed.” occurs when you try to start Microsoft Access after updating to Version 1802 [FIXED] ISSUE You may get the following error when start Access after updating to Monthly Channel Version 1802 (Build 9029.2167 or higher): “Automatic configuration of…

Access Web Apps

Access Web Apps to be retired

It was announced that Access Services is going to be retired. Details of the announcement may be found here: Updating the Access Services in SharePoint Roadmap. Additional timeline information along with possible methods for exporting your data out of an Access web app may be found here: Access web apps no longer supported. While these articles…

new table

Creating a Make Table Query

Before we create the Make Table Query, you might like to create a new blank database file. This is so we have a separate database into which we can paste the new table from the query. In this exercise I have called it HistoricData.accdb. Here is the procedure to create a Make Table Query: Open…

drag and drop in Access

Drag & Drop and Conditional Sorting in Microsoft Access

Drag and Drop In MS Access Doug was on a roll in January of 2004 when he wrote his article on drag and drop in MS Access. He tested it now using Access 2016 and it still works. This article shows you how to add drag-and-drop to your Access application using combinations of multi-value and…

“Too Few Parameters” error fix

Symptoms Whenever you run a SQL statement you get a “Too Few Parameters, expected X.” Cause Most common cause is misspelling or missing fields in the SQL statement. Resolution Check the SQL statement. If necessary, copy and paste to an Access query and test in the query to get it to highlight which part of…

Unrecognized Database Format

Access 2010: Unrecognized Database Format

I’ve been seeing more and more people having problems with the Unrecognized Database Format when creating or modifying an Access 2007 (accdb) format database in Access 2010 and then trying to open it again in Access 2007. The issue appears to be that Access 2010 does not have its own file format. When you add a…

Self-documenting code

Strong preference should be given to writing code that is self-documenting. A common approach is to write a lot of comments, but the problem with comments are twofold: It actually can harm the readability because it adds to the overall length of code to read and understand. It must be correct or it can end…

MODULE LEVEL VARIABLES

Module level variables

It is common to create a big wall of declaration in a module such as this:

While the code will compile and work fine, the discoverability and naming of the module level variables does become difficult and unwieldy. To help cut down on this ambiguity, it is recommended to create a private user-defined type…

Use TryGet pattern for transient values

A number of objects may have extra properties or something where it might not exist for all instances. A good example might be finding Controlsource property on an Access.Control variable:

Not all controls have a ControlSource property and thus can fail to run. A common approach is to use OERN:

This will work…

Truthy and Falsy Values

“Truthy” and “Falsy” Values

VBA is quite very loose in what it deems “truthy” and “falsy”. For example, this procedure can produce surprising result:

At the first glance, it seems expected that if the bit field is set to 1, it would succeed. But in fact, it wouldn’t because True is equivalent to -1, not 1. Unless we…