Designing a Standing Desk Without Spending Lots of Money

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

I admit it, I spend way too much time sitting. My work is mostly at the computer so that’s where I am for hours every day and that’s not counting the time in front spent watching Hulu and streaming other stuff.

Much is being written now about the dangers of prolonged sitting from increased risks of diabetes and heart disease to back and leg problems. I’ve seen the effects on my own weight over the years. I’ve been wanting to get a standing desk for awhile now but they often run in the hundreds of dollars and I’m not spending that.

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Personal Tech

How to Get Started Writing Your Own Book

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

It Seems Like I’ve Been Here Before …

People seem fairly impressed when I mention that I’ve written a couple of books on databases and software. I try not to make a big deal of it, just mentioning it in passing as appropriate, because I actually don’t consider it to be a big deal. I’m one of those people who likes to share knowledge, likes to write and has accumulated a decent amount of knowledge on a few things. Occasionally, that knowledge demands to be organized and backed up in article or book form. There’s also been the hope that others will find it useful in their own lives and might actually pay for it.

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Articles, Writing

Recovering a Corrupted Table in Access With VBA

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

Recently, a client started experiencing errors, seemingly at random, in the database application I managed for them. The errors immediately started mentioning corruption and then these came through …

Error 3167 – Record is Deleted

Getting everyone out of the system and running a Compact / Repair seemed to help, but then …

“The Microsoft Access database engine cannot find a record in the table … with key matching fields() …

At this point, I decided a rebuild of the database was in order since it hadn’t been done in years. I’d just create a new database file, import everything, test and everything should be resolved.

Then the import process failed on one of the main tables with the following error …

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Microsoft Access, Programming, SQL

Should You Keep Using Microsoft Access?

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

Full Disclosure – I Owe My Career to Access

I’ve been working with Microsoft Access off and on since 1997, just a few years after it was first introduced in ’92. I can realistically say that learning Access made my career in I.T.. I’d had some previous programming and database experience with Borland Paradox and an older DOS title so I had some idea of what I was doing when I decided to automate some of my work with the copy of Access 97 that I.T. had installed on my machine with Office.

I spent the next few years creating Access apps and learning about things like normalization and report design. I started out using Access macros, tentatively started playing with Visual Basic for Applications and then started creating sophisticated Access / VBA apps for other departments and facilities within the company. I started a website in 2000, wrote about Access and offered some samples for download. A few pages of introduction to Access that I wrote for a friend became a series of articles titled “Microsoft Access for Beginners” which brought a lot of web traffic and then became a book that didn’t sell very well but was appreciated by those who read it. In 2003, I took on my first Access client as an independent programmer. In 2005, the expertise I demonstrated with Access helped me get my first full-time programming job with Access and other languages. It’s continued from there.

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Databases, Microsoft Access, Software

How to Shut Down Remote Instances of Microsoft Access

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

When you’re managing a multi-user Microsoft Access application, there are times when you need all users out of the database so that you can make changes to table structures and other items. Asking everyone to shut down is unreliable and using the Windows Task Manager to forcibly shut down instances of Microsoft Access is risky at best. Most multi-user apps should be split into separate front-end / back-end files with each user having a separate copy of the front-end so you need something that will signal all those copies to shut down and stay shut down until whatever maintenance you’re performing is complete.

In summary, my preferred way to do this is to use a settings table in the back-end database file that includes a boolean field which can be set to True to activate maintenance mode. The front-end files contain a form that stays open but hidden in the background as long as the application is open. This form uses a timer to check the value of the boolean field every 10 minutes or so. If the field is set to True, the application will notify the user, give them a minute or two to finish what they’re doing and then use the Applicaiton.Quit command to shut down automatically.

Ideally, you should still communicate with the users to let them know the database will be down for a period of time but this method helps with users who leave the app open overnight or while out to lunch, etc..

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Databases, Microsoft Access, Programming

Five WordPress Plugins That Will Enhance Your Website

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

WordPress is the most popular Content Management System, powering approximately a third of the world’s websites in September 2019 according to W3Techs.com. One of its advantages is the ability to quickly add almost any necessary features through the installation of plugins. The WordPress marketplace includes over 50,000 plugins, many of which are free to download with additional premium features available for paying users. 

Most WordPress users who spend any time administering a site will hear about the most popular plugins such as Yoast SEO for optimizing search engine performance and Akismet which comes pre-installed with WordPress and reduces spam comments submitted to the site.  The following list contains a few other useful types of plugins that you can help you maintain and enhance your site.

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Software, Web Design

Managing Your Organization’s Contacts with CiviCRM

Posted on By Andrew Comeau

Whether you’re selling products, managing a non-profit or running a political campaign, one of the most important things you do is to manage relationships with other people. Your ability to maintain your organization’s contact database, whether it contains potential customers or donors, is essential to your operations.

Many organizations use various types of Contact Relationship Management (CRM) software such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics in order to collect and maintain all of the important details on the people they interact with. Depending on the software and features selected, this can run into hundreds of dollars per month. Other software has a high entrance fee or additional costs for importing existing records and other features.

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Databases, Software

Troubleshooting MS-Access Error 31532 – Unable to export data.

Posted on By Andrew Comeau 1 Comment on Troubleshooting MS-Access Error 31532 – Unable to export data.

Microsoft Access can sometimes seem to have its own obstinate personality, throwing errors that persist no matter what you try. I wanted to share a recent troubleshooting experience to show some of the steps that you can take when a function is just not working as expected and the decision process involved in fixing it.

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Microsoft Access, Programming
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