The last couple of versions of Crystal Reports, 2016 and 2020, have seen a significant change in regard to connecting to data sources. Specifically, the ability to connect to Microsoft Access databases and Excel workbooks has changed. For Crystal Reports 2016 and earlier, the connection …
The Select Case statement in Visual Basic for Applications sometimes “competes” with the If…Then…Else statement, because the two can both be used for testing information. When we want to find out about more than one thing, condition, or what have you, we sometimes need to …
There are a few important and helpful things to watch out for in Access reports. They spring from the fact that, unlike most other database components, reports often have to stand on their own. So their formatting and layout have to be more complete and …
Dealing with errors in VBA code, especially in Access, is a vital part of setting up procedures. If nothing else, an error-handler can give the user a better idea of what’s glitching, if something does. And having a message box come up to give the …
Calculated fields are a really big help in Access; they let us derive data from existing information. And they’re flexible, too. If one of the source items changes, the calculation updates immediately, just like an Excel formula. But some people aren’t aware you can add …
The idea of the split form in Access is rather like its cousin in Project. We set up a view with the “big picture” or large-scale view in one portion of the window (usually the top), and details in the bottom. Sometimes vice versa, but …
The action query in Access is a different thing from the normal query we create, called a “select” query. The latter simply selects data and shows the result. But an action query edits data, or even deletes it. And the key thing one needs to …
Just as there can be subforms and subreports within an Access form or report, there can be a subquery within a query. As the term implies, a “query within a query” allows the main query to be more specific, or complex. It sometimes requires a …
The use of table relationships in Access allows tables to cooperate in the use of data, but table joins, while they look similar, serve a different purpose. The relationships, which allow coordination while organizing data, nevertheless don’t directly affect, say, the results of a query. …
One of the more abstruse points of procedure in Access involves the three so-called normal forms. What, exactly, are they? If you think “guidelines”, or “protocols”, you’d be in the ballpark. When building a database, especially a relational database, there are some “streamlinings” which allow …