Microsoft Access Development Tips

Access Help and Samples

As well as undertaking Microsoft Access development for clients, we also publish some of the useful Access code we have developed. The following library of Access VBA samples may prove useful for MS Access Developers.

Adding a Field to a Linked Table . If you need to update a linked table from the main Access database, here is the code to do it. You can set it to run on startup and see if the field is in the linked table. If not it will add it.

Expanded Text Box. Click on a text box and display a larger input screen. When you are finished editing the large form, transfer the text to the original form.

Create a temporary copy of a Table. Sometimes you might want to copy a table, do some manipulation and then delete it. This function will create the table by just passing the name.

Count the number of Records. This generic function can be used to count the number of records returned by an SQL query. It is useful for finding if there are any records. If there are no records, it returns zero.

Check if a form is open . Another generic function to check if a form is open. Useful to put into a generic module when building databases.

Change the font size in a label. If you have a fixed length label and the caption text can vary in length (e.g. A person's name on a report header), you can change the font size using this function,

Calculate the number of days in a month . This is a simple function to calculate the number of days in a month. Pass a date to the function and it returns the number of days in the month.

Generic Functions. Functions you can use multiple times in an application.

Check if a field is null, blank or zero
Check if a form is loaded
Check if a form is a subform

Help Function. This includes a sample database that illustrates how to build a help function in Microsoft Access without using the standard help functionality. The help is stored in a table and users can update their own help.

Adding a Field to a Linked Microsoft Access Database Table. How to add a new field to a linked database from the Front End Database

Check if it Exists. Check if a form or report exists. Check if it is loaded. Check if a field exists in a table. Check if an external file exists.

Sending Emails and Storing Hyperlinks. Send an Outlook Email from Access, create a file, then store the file hyperlink in a table. Download a sample database.