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.
twinBASIC HOW TO: Install twinBASIC The latest step-by-step instructions for installing twinBASIC (aka, Visual Basic 8).
Announcement vbWatchdog v4 Released Version 4 of vbWatchdog just got released. If you don't already own a license for it, you should. And if you do, you should upgrade before August 31, 2022.
Tools Access Database Right-Click Context Menu Creator Wouldn't it be great to right-click an Access file to compact or decompile it? With Daniel Pineault's awesome tool, you can!
Tools Changing Internet Explorer Options in IE Mode of Microsoft Edge Did you try to change Internet Explorer options from IE Mode in Edge only to realize that you can't get to them? Luckily, there's an easy workaround.
Tools 3 Free Options for Managing Linked Tables in Access The original linked table manager was a terrible tool. Let's look at three better options for today's Microsoft Access developers.
Debugging Troubleshooting the "Unable to create target directory" Error in PDQ Deploy with ProcMon Let's use my jack-of-all-trades troubleshooting tool--Process Monitor--to find the root cause of a recurring PDQ Deploy error.
Signal vs. Noise Signal vs. Noise: ShowPlan.out Edition Reading showplan.out files can be intimidating for new and experienced Access developers alike. This simple rule will help get you started.
Debugging Troubleshooting Access Hanging When Switching to Design View How I used two low-level tools--ProcMon and WireShark--to figure out why Access was taking forever to switch to design view in forms and reports.