Here is an informative page describing the data model for a Hotel Room booking system.

This page from Microsoft gives you an idea what can and cannot be moved to SharePoint. My golden rule is only move what you want to share outside your normal userbase and NOTHING more.

Note: We use http://www.sharepointhosting.com/ for our hosting.

Switch databases quickly, find out the users opening your databases, switch between Access 2003 and Access 2007 and much more.

I was recently asked how to setup a form to use Option boxes for data entry. The solution required a subltle setup of tables and lookup tables. The notes for this task are in The Toolbox website

Todd from Manchester writes

"I was just reading your latest 'MaxOut On Access Weekly' newsletter (received November 11th, 2008). I just want to add a note to your article titled 'Access 101: How Do I Replace System Error Messages With Custom Messages?' **. FMS has recently released a listing of all Access messages. It can be found at this URL:

http://www.fmsinc.com/MicrosoftAccess/Errors/ErrorNumber_Description.html

I enjoy your newsletter. I have your book 'Real World Microsoft Access Database Protection and Security', and have found it most useful.


** Note from Garry: Our MaxOut newsletter comprises of 6 Access MVP blogs as well as my own writings. www.vb123.com/news for more on that

If you are in the unfortunate position of not having much paid work on in this global economic downturn, now is the time to upgrade your skills because if you are a skilled developer who can help people solve business problems, positive times will not be far away. So as it is likely that you are an Access practitioner, I suggest that the best way to improve your skills is to push into areas where Access provides a stepping stone. To me SQL Server is one of those areas and here is what you have to do.

1. Identify the database that you are most proud of and convert it to run with a SQL Server backend.

2. Do not stop when things get hard, solve all the problems.

3. It would be best if you then started using that database in your day to day work.

4. When that works, start converting the Access queries to Views, Pass Thru Queries and Stored Procedures

One thing you shouldn't do though. is become 100% immersed in your unpaid projects because its always better to write software that people need. For this, you will need to make sure that you attend conferences, participate in online forums and contact all the people that can help you get back into the thick of things. Good luck to you in your endeavours.

Garry Robinson from Sydney, Australia

You can download new help files for Access 2007

Luke Chung from FMS has written another one of his insightful articles on the dynamics of programming using rapid development environments such as Access, Excel and SharePoint. This one has been written with the motivation of the economic conditions but its a timeless piece. Read on

vb123.com offers an online repair system for Access databases. The system is setup so that your data is encrypted before it is transmitted and in most cases, you should be able to recover a corrupt database in less than 30 minutes elapsed time. Garry

If you are still using Access 2000, 2002, 2003 or even Access 97, have you considered my book on Access security. Read the 15 5 star reviews at Amazon.

Maxout is our newsletter that combines blog content from a number of Access MVPs and the Microsoft Access team. It comes out once a week. Here is the latest incarnation. Sign up at vb123.com.au/news

We tie a lot of our Access consultancy business together using a collaboration tool called Basecamp from 37Signals. Read more about BaseCamp here or join up to our new ThickToast newsletter http://www.thicktoast.com where you can read about Garry's thoughts on BaseCamp and other online providers that help our business.

Read the last newsletter online. All the posts from January to April 2008

Greetings to you all from Sydney Australia.

Have a great New Year and enjoy the newsletter.

Garry Robinson
Access MVP and Editor of vb123.com and vb123.blogspot.com

Here you can get the standard MS Access content plus content from Garry's Blog all in the same newsletter.

If you want to see a lot of Access content from a number of different blogs including our Extra Content, then sign up here.