At the Access Sig meeting on Feb 2, Jenny told us about the Microsoft Office User Specialist program (http://www.mous.net/) where she took the test to become certified as a Microsoft Office User Specialist for Access 97. The test cost $50, and in Tulsa there are four different locations where she could have taken it. She took it at Star Training Institute, which was the only site to call her back and confirm the were set to do it, but she could have taken it at CompUSA - Store #234, Productivity Point International, or ExecuTrain of Tulsa. The web page contains addresses, phone numbers, and all other information. They have a practice exam available on the Web Page, but at this time it does not include Access; it just covers: Word Proficiency, Expert, Excel Proficiency, Expert, and PowerPoint Expert, but I expect they will have the Access practice test there soon, and you can download the ones they do have to get a feel for the type of questions you will be asked.

We took a look at a church database where they wanted the fields on the data sheet view to be in the same order as the fields on the form. The answer was simple. Click on the field to be moved to highlight it, and then drag it to the desired position on the data sheet view.

Bruce wanted a procedure to update records in the main database if a remote version of the database had more current information, but he did not have an example with him. He will bring it next month, and we will work on that problem at that time. This highlights an important thing that people should think about. If you want us to try to solve a problem, it really helps if you can bring a disk with the database in question on it. In addition to 3-1/2" floppy disks, the machine we have available can also handle the 100mb ZIP disks, and the 120mb LS-120 Super Disks, so if you have either of those on your computer, you may use it to bring a file to the meeting for the group to work on.

John had a report where he wanted the date displayed in word format (Jan, Feb, Mar, etc) but he wanted it sorted so that Jan came before Feb, and both before Mar, etc so an ascii sort on the name would not work. The display data was formatted with an "mmm" format, and he tried "m" to get a numeric format, but Oct, Nov, and Dec started with a 1, and so they sorted between Jan and Feb. The answer was to change the format on his hidden sort field to "mm", which gives a two digit numeric format, 01, 02, 03, ... 10, 11, 12 and then it sorts perfectly.

Richard brought a disk to show us an access database called Webtrack, which contained a list of 13,940 web sites, with an ability to search the Access Database by Title, Address, Description, Site Added By, Category, and SubCategory, and get a list of sites that match your specs. Using it to search for "Access" AND "Database" yielded 8 sites, Ancestry Search (a commercial site which offers access to the Social Security Administration's database of deceased Americans, searchable by name, Social Security number, residence, or date of birth or death, along with a variety of other resources), Biotechnology Information Center (searchable information databases, bibliographies and resource guides on a range of biotechnological topics, access to biotechnology publications, and many other resources), Castro Speech Databases (The Latin American Network Information Center at the University of Texas provides access to a searchable database of speeches by Cuban leader Fidel Castro), CDC Wonder (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide access to their databases of public health information; registration is required for some sections), Construction Information Gateway (provides access to a number of organizations associated with the building trade and building technology, together with a database of building components), FedWorld Information Network (access to U.S. federal government information and document databases as well as links to related resources), Med Help International (created by a team of health care professionals, provides access to a variety of medical databases, including thousands of articles; registration is required for complete access), and The Library of Congress (provides access to government information and publications, online exhibits, Library of Congress databases, and a wealth of other material). None of the sites had information about the Microsoft Access Database program, but many of them sounded interesting, and may appear in future editions of our Cool Web Sites column.

The database had a function where a new list can supposedly be downloaded from http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/articles/accesswebtrackupd.htm but I tried it and there was no update available.

Some questions were asked which were unrelated to Access, but we tried to address them as well as we could. One man had drawn a picture of several things on his screen which he did not understand; unfortunately we learned he runs Win 3.1, and we no longer have it on the Luggable, so we were unable to actually bring it up and show him how to do what he wanted to do, but we explained it as best we could remember from the deep recesses of our memories. I hope it helped him.

I was asked some questions about Access generating a Report in HTML format, and showed how Tables were required to implement columns in HTML. I showed where our web page linked to several pages that described Tables in detail. I also showed the group UltraEdit, which I will be covering in detail at the Feb 20 Internet Sig meeting.

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