The Access SIG meeting this month was full of input from the members, 
providing a lively time with considerable cross pollination of ideas. 
Quite appropriate really, considering the season.  

Gary Hart started the meeting off by showing his method used for the opening form of 
his company's database. This relied on two dynamically changing List boxes to 
provide the links to the various forms in the database. A mockup tab control 
was created by using two labels over the second list box. As one label was 
clicked both labels swapped their back colour and the list box's Rowsource 
property was altered and re-queried to present the second "tab". This was 
carefully done with very stylish formatting, providing a professional and 
user-friendly interface. Ingenious!

Craig Evans followed with his presentation on "Events, Macros" for newbies. 
This showed how macros can be a good method for beginners to enhance the 
performance of their database by using the structured method of macros to 
respond to events. Also covered was the order in which various events occur, how 
this can have various effects on the final result, sometimes giving something 
that may have not been intended. All essential knowledge for beginners.

After a short break Tony Whitty gave his presentation on "Importing, Exporting". 
Showing the various methods for getting data to and from a database. The range 
of options for these processes are huge, other database types, Excel, text, html, 
xml and more. He lead us through the more common methods, what to be aware 
of and a few traps for beginners. Also shown was a little known aspect that you 
can save a template for the importing and exporting of a particular file. Great 
stuff if you need to do this often, meaning that it is not necessary to go through 
the laborious Access Import/Export wizard each time.

Craig Evans jumped into the seat again for the final session with problem solving.

1: Copying a total from a subform to a text box in the parent form was failing to 
copy the new total, only copying the prior total.
A: This was not completely solved. To fully analyse the problem a code break needs to 
be inserted, followed by stepping through all code, watching the result for each line.

2: Unable to enter data in a table field.  
A: Due to table design the field's Lookup property was set to a ComboBox which had 
it's Rowsource property referring to a table lacking data and had the LimitToList 
property was set to True. This was fixed by changing the lookup property back to 
the default "Text Box". 

3: A Subform's Recordsource query sort wasn't the same as the displayed sort.
A: The subform's Order By property had been set at some time previously to DESC. 
This over-rides the form's recordset order. Solution is to delete the subform's 
OrderBy property or edit it by removing the DESC keyword.

All good stuff to keep the mind active. If you'd like more solutions and amazing 
discoveries drop in to the Access SIG, second Monday of the month except January (no meeting).

All problems readily accepted.  If you are not completely satisfied 
with our solutions we will happily return your problems with a smile 
and no questions asked.

You will benefit most if you are currently working on a database - but 
don't let that deter you from coming along.  Bring your 97/2000/2003 
database with you and we will probably fix it on the spot.  Only on a memory 
stick, CD or DVD, no floppies please.
Remember : all the solutions are simple - some just take a little longer to figure out.