Version Control Five Types of Files to Exclude From MS Access Version Control The provided sample .hgignore and .gitignore files are good starting points when setting up new Microsoft Access version control repositories.
Tools Installing TortoiseHg: Step-by-Step Step-by-step instructions for installing my preferred distributed version control system (DVCS) for Access developers looking to get started with version control.
Version Control Installing the Access Version Control Add-in: Step-by-Step Looking to try version control with Microsoft Access? Start here by installing Adam Waller's free and open-source Version Control Addin for MS Access.
Tools Customizing the VoidTools Everything File Search Utility with Custom Commands The latest insider version of the Everything search tool introduces a new killer feature.
Tools Unfamiliar Language? 10X Your Productivity by Combining the Old with the New Pairing this free AI tool with an old-school technique is the key to unlocking immediate productivity in unfamiliar programming languages.
Tools Poe: My Tool of Choice for Exploring the World of LLMs With so many new and exciting LLMs and AI image generators, how do you pick just one? What if you didn't have to?
Tools PureText: Paste Unformatted Text From Your Clipboard Are you tired of the Notepad dance: Copy rich text, paste in Notepad, select all, copy, paste plain text? If so, this simple utility could be life-changing.
Tools Setting Up a New MS Access Development Environment Five settings and two addins that vastly improve your quality of life as a Microsoft Access developer.
Tools How to Be Signed In To Multiple Organizations in the MS Teams Desktop App Simultaneously This trick allows you to run multiple instances of the Microsoft Teams desktop app with each instance signed in to a different organization.
Debugging SSE Setup: Fix for Error -2147024671 This is a great example of how we can break down seemingly random Windows error codes to guide our debugging efforts.
VBA Tools > References... Safe List A list of references that may be safely included with your VBA projects without requiring any extra effort during deployment.
Tools Using Hard Links to Help Mimic a Client Network Environment Need to mimic data environments for multiple clients? Hate managing the resulting data sprawl? Hard links can help.
Tools Instantly "Copy" Huge Files Using Hard Links in Windows Hard links are a well-hidden feature of the Windows file system. Don't let Linux users have all the fun!
SQL Server Installing Multiple Versions of SQL Server Side-by-Side on a Development Machine Save resources by setting additional instances of SQL Server to Manual startup. Use Process Explorer to grant Start/Stop permissions for an individual service.
Advanced Microsoft Access's Surprising Folder Locking Behavior Microsoft Access could be the source of file and folder locks in ways that might surprise you.
Tools Simple Logging Framework for VBScript Files If you use VB Script files to automate recurring tasks, adding support for severity-based logging offers cheap insurance against future problems.
Tools Password Generator There are plenty of online password generator sites, but this one is my favorite.
VBA MS Access Windows API Viewer Here are three good options for looking up proper Declare statements when calling Windows API functions from VBA.
Tools Using FreeMind as a Schema Development Tool In the early stages of planning a database design, I prefer a tool that lets me capture my thoughts as they flow without getting in the way. FreeMind is that tool.
Tools Checking Version Compatibility with NetOffice Take advantage of the open-source NetOffice project on GitHub to look up version compatibility for the Access/Office/Word/Excel object models.
Tools ActiveX Controls: Love 'Em or Hate 'Em? I always avoid ActiveX controls in my Access applications. Except when I can't. Or don't want to. It's complicated...
Tools AccessImagine: ActiveX Picture Control for Access If you are building an image-rich data application with Microsoft Access, you can save yourself a lot of development time with a third-party tool like AccessImagine.
Tools Connecting to GitHub from TortoiseHg Using SSH Keys Step-by-step instructions to set up a completely seamless integration between TortoiseHg and GitHub. No passwords. No Pageant. No friction of any kind.
Tools Automatically Link to Your Bug Database from TortoiseHg Everyone's favorite Windows Mercurial software includes a killer feature that is criminally underused.