Category: How-to

Excel Sorting and AI Voiceovers

April 17, 2025April 17, 2025 Andrew Comeau

In my latest video, I demonstrate how to sort rows randomly in Excel using a collection of test questions and answers that will be featured in the next update of my book, “Self-Guided SQL“. What’s really interesting about this video is the voiceover provided by the A.I. text-to-speech app from ElevenLabs.io. Voiceovers have always been…

A.I., How-to

Self-Publishing Your Book in 2025

January 22, 2025January 22, 2025 Andrew Comeau

I’m getting closer to publishing my next book, Self-Guided SQL, and I’ve been reviewing the process for creating and uploading e-books. There will be a hard cover edition through Amazon but I want to get the e-book out of the way first. Microsoft Word There are a lot of tools that you can use to…

How-to, Resources

How to Make PDF Forms – Quickly and Easily

December 22, 2023December 22, 2023 Andrew Comeau

(This article was also published on Medium) I hate filling out forms, especially if I have to print them out or do it by hand. Handwriting is uncomfortable for someone who rarely does it, especially if you were told all the time you were growing up how bad your writing was. The most handwriting I…

How-to

Installing IIS and PHP on Windows Server

October 5, 2021February 18, 2023 Andrew Comeau

Several years ago, I wrote an extensive article on creating a WIMP development stack (Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP) and it’s been quite popular here on the site. I’ve meant to do an update for awhile now and finally got around to it this week! This time around, I decided to do a video demonstration on…

How-to, Software, Web Design

Helping Users Work With Subforms in Microsoft Access

March 19, 2019February 14, 2023 Andrew Comeau

Creating an Access application for other people means anticipating how the users are going to interact with your program. Without clear direction from the program or you, users can be easily confused by even simple things like the order in which data is to be entered.

One of the basic tools in Access is the subform which allows for the input of records related to a master record. A classic example is a database which stores customer orders and where each order might have multiple items (i.e. order lines) associated with it.

How-to, Microsoft Access

How To Create a Dynamic Search Filter on a Microsoft Access Form

January 9, 2019February 18, 2023 Andrew Comeau 10 Comments

Best practice when retrieving data in Microsoft Access or any database, for that matter, is to limit the amount of data that you pull at any one time. This means using the proper filters and limiting the number of fields retrieved. Often, you still end up with a lot of information to look through anyway. That’s when it can help to have a dynamic search filter that will enable you to easily search the records with just a few keystrokes.

One easy way to do this is use the form’s Filter and FilterOn properties along with the KeyUp event as shown here.

How-to, Microsoft Access, Programming

How to Dynamically Set the Report RecordSource in Microsoft Access

January 8, 2019February 18, 2023 Andrew Comeau

One of the steps for creating a report in Microsoft Access is to define where the data is coming from. This is done through the report’s Record Source property which can be a table or standalone query in the database or a SQL statement as shown in the screenshot below.

Usually, this is defined when the report is created and only gets changed if needed. In some cases, however, you might want to use the same report object for many different queries. You could have a mailing list report that you want to use for employees, customers or other groups at different times and the data would be drawn from different tables or even different databases.

How-to, Microsoft Access, Programming

Performing a Basic Install of MySQL or MariaDB in Windows

May 21, 2017February 18, 2023 Andrew Comeau

One of the great things about MySQL and MariaDB are their versatility of installation. They can be setup as a Windows services and trimmed out with some extra utilities or it can be installed on a flash drive as a portable server.

The easiest installation is certainly the Windows Installer with a wizard for MySQL or the MariaDB MSI that will guide you through the installation of the server and all the options you want. Myself, I still like self-contained programs that won’t interfere with anything else on my system and can be easily removed without leaving hidden traces. I also don’t like adding a lot of stuff to my Windows startup.

If you have a basic comfort with using the Windows command line and control panel, doing a minimal installation of either MariaDB or MySQL is not difficult once you understand a few steps. The MySQL full documentation and the MariaDB Knowedgebase are available for reference on their respective sites but here are the essentials to get you started.

Database Design, How-to

Windows 7 Update Gets Stuck While Looking for Updates

December 28, 2016November 9, 2022 Andrew Comeau 1 Comment

After doing my year-end rebuild of my Windows 7 system, I went ahead and did a check for updates, preparing to wait for awhile as there were currently over 150 important updates for my system even after installing SP1. So I waited … and waited … and waited some more. After a couple hours, I…

How-to

Adding Passswords to Microsoft Access Switchboard Options

November 2, 2015January 11, 2024 Andrew Comeau 1 Comment

The Switchboard Manager in Microsoft Access makes it easy to create a system of menus that will enable your users to navigate through your application. It also relieves you of the need to manage multiple menu forms and macro calls.

Microsoft Access switchboard form — Figure 1 – Example Access Switchboard

Sometimes, however, you might want to keep all but a few users out of specific areas, even if it’s just a password to discourage the curious. This is one thing the Switchboard Manager doesn’t offer and I’d like to show you one method for achieving this here. I want to stress that this method is not truly secure. On it’s own, it won’t prevent a user from hitting F11 and browsing through the database. A power user who wants to see those areas could defeat this method pretty quickly. It will keep the merely curious and inexperienced users out, however, and could be combined with other measures to add more security.

How-to, Microsoft Access, Programming