George presented a probelm with a form he was using. He wanted his form to be on the next blank record when it opened. John demonstrated the use of a "go to record, new".

Bonnie presented a problem she had getting a date control on a form to show current date+7. John and Don demonstrated the use of the date() function with an integer as the default value for a date control.

Various other problems and techniques were discussed, and George demoed a dynamic filter.

11/2/1999 meeting report

An avid group of Access aficionados met at the Schusterman Benson Library on Tuesday evening November 2nd. Richard deJongh brought us an interesting problem, with a solution. He's been working on a database to handle crew scheduling for aircraft maintenance, and needed to produce a report using the output from a crosstab query. With the data he was using, the headings of the crosstab query would change each time the data was updated. This meant that the headings and report data had to be able to change dynamically, with the query results. He had found a solution through an internet contact, and shared the results with everyone. Thanks Richard for bringing the solution on diskettes so that we could each take it home with us.

Bob Sawyer needed to know how to suppress the messages produced by queries when they were run in a macro. The group was please to be able to inform him of the Set Warnings Action that is available.

Richard provided us with another useful idea in database development. He has set up a special table and report in his database to record the history of revisions made to the programs.

Although this is not Access related, we also learned how to compress data on the A drive. This is available in Windows 98. Using Explorer, right click the A drive, and select Properties from the menu. One of the tabs appearing is Compression. Select that. Then, press the Compress Drive button. Then, press the Start button. Then press the Compress Now button. Be patient while it works, then press the Close button. You will now have much more space on your diskette!

Bruce Carson reminded us that we can cancel the Autoexec macro that runs when an Access database is opened by holding the shift key as the database opens.

Our next meeting will be December 7th. Please join us if you are interested in working with Microsoft Access.

For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here