The enduring nature of Access

NauticalGent · Aug 1, 2019

Greeting Access Aficionados,

I was having a private conversation with one of our highly respected members. They were involved in a thread and I was impressed with something they had said so I contacted them about it.

I have always been impressed with this member's passion for Access and their ability to harness the power of Access to maximize the full functionality of Access coupled with their equally mastery of VBA.

Their are a few members on the forum who fit that bill, but THIS one had this to say:

...even though you can make lots of things work using different methods, I've come to accept that fighting with Access is fruitless and so I do things the "Access" way unless I have a real need to do it MY way. Think about the brilliance of the original Access development team. This product is still essentially the same after 35+ years. That is absolutely amazing. Stuff has been added over the years. The "look" has been modernized (not enough), but you wouldn't have any trouble today using A2.0 once you got past the issue of finding all the options due to the changes in how the menus are organized.

Now those are the words of someone who loves what they do and it shows...

Dreamweaver · Aug 1, 2019

I remember v2.0 Now I feel so old lol
The only issue I have with access is why did they replace the old toolbars with ones you now have to click 3 or 4 time to get what you want with the old custom toolbars 1 click was all you needed, Other than that still love using it and finding new and wonderful ways to give me brain ache.

deletedT · Aug 2, 2019

Pat Hartman said:
We look at Access as a development platform and that is why we need the ability to create menus and lock stuff so the user can't get to it. But they look at Access just as they look at Word and Excel.

I have a personalized ribbon for each of my applications. As every user logs in to the Front End, the ribbon is re-generated (if I can use generate in this case) according to his/her rights. The tabs, buttons, menus, right click context menu, every thing that you can imagine, every thing that you may think of is personalized according to what the user is allowed to do and what is not.

the following is just an example. You can not find even one of access original ribbon, menus or buttons. Everything is just created according to the user privileges to let him do what he's supposed to.

I think I'm using Access from 1997. And in my opinion, adding ribbon to Access made it much more flexible and user friendly.

-

jdraw · Aug 2, 2019

Tera,

Impressive! Perhaps you'd like to show readers the code for customizing the ribbon for individual user preferences.

deletedT · Aug 2, 2019

jdraw said:
Tera,

Impressive! Perhaps you'd like to show readers the code for customizing the ribbon for individual user preferences.

I'll post it if anyone is interested.
But it's not a code. It's a sequence of procedures. ( more than a thousand line of code)

I have a table that list the tabs.
And a child table that has a list of buttons for each tab.
Another table with a relation to both above tables keeps two field for captions of each button (one for english users, one for Japanese) another field for on mouse over hint and one more field that keeps the name of sub/function when the button is clicked.

Both these tables has a relation to a table that keeps the right and privileges of users.

Now in every login, the user types his login name and Pass. A function selects a collection of tabs according to the user privilege , and adds several buttons to each tab and creates a xml for the ribbon. The xml is passed to Access to create the ribbon and I'm done.

Each user has a language specified collection of tabs and buttons to do his job.

Since the number of users are not too much, I'm changing this method to a much simpler one. I mixed the table for tabs and buttons and it's xml into one single table.
In every login show/hide several tabs according to each user right.

For example Admin & Form Design tabs in above images (the two right tabs) are only offered to admin group. Other users don't have these tabs.

jdraw · Aug 2, 2019

I'm sure others could benefit from your materials.
Please post with an example if possible/practical.
Thanks in advance.

deletedT · Aug 2, 2019

From 8/15 Japan goes into a one week summer holidays. The first three days I’ll be on a short trip with my family. I’ll put up a sample database in the last two days to show how does it work.

I’m sorry I can’t post sooner.

NauticalGent · Aug 2, 2019

While we are waiting for Tera’s sample, here is the first in a 9 part series of videos on how to do custom ribbons.

I had toyed with the idea myself but what I have works and quite frankly, I was still too lazy to monkey with it...

https://youtu.be/Zt3F4_Z5LIw

jdraw · Aug 2, 2019

Thanks Tera. Enjoy your vacation.

Dreamweaver · Aug 2, 2019

I've gone back to using buttons as it drives me nuts click, click, click

Dreamweaver · Aug 2, 2019

Allowing Uses into a switchboard is complete madness maybe these people upgrading access should spend a few years building projects.

deletedT · Aug 3, 2019

MickJav said:
Allowing Uses into a switchboard is complete madness maybe these people upgrading access should spend a few years building projects.

Can you be a little bit more specific? Why and how?
I'm afraid I can't understand what you're trying to say here.

Thanks.

Gasman · Aug 3, 2019

MickJav said:
Allowing Uses into a switchboard is complete madness maybe these people upgrading access should spend a few years building projects.

Mick,
Why do you say that?

I've only ever written simple applications, but have given the users a switchboard to work from when the app starts.

I amended the table and code to take into account various levels of authorisation/roles and has worked fine.

Admittedly I have never had any savvy Access users, who would want to dig deeper though, but then, they only ever used a accde FE.

Dreamweaver · Aug 3, 2019

Gasman said:
Mick,
Why do you say that?

I've only ever written simple applications, but have given the users a switchboard to work from when the app starts.

I amended the table and code to take into account various levels of authorisation/roles and has worked fine.

Admittedly I have never had any savvy Access users, who would want to dig deeper though, but then, they only ever used a accde FE.

I do the same and disable the Navigation pane thats what I meant

Dreamweaver · Aug 3, 2019

Pat Hartman said:
I think Mick was referring to using the Nav pane as a user switchboard.

thanks Pat still thinging of the good old days lol

NauticalGent · Aug 3, 2019

Pat Hartman said:
Why?? Who asked for this to be changed?? Why change something that isn't broken??

The Access gnomes are some mischievous little cusses...

Dreamweaver · Aug 3, 2019

I have to be honest when I saw the toolbars in 2007 I very nearlly gave up and did stop using it for quite a while but once you have the bug it's damn hard to kick it almost needed AA LOL

deletedT · Aug 3, 2019

MickJav said:
I do the same and disable the Navigation pane thats what I meant

Still I don’t see any proof here on why you hate it.
Show it or hide it is a matter of preference. I understand that. But hate needs some proof and how it may hurt.

Dreamweaver · Aug 3, 2019

Tera said:
Still I don’t see any proof here on why.

If you leave the navigation pan so a user can click F11 they have access to tables queries I wont go into what might happen if sombody altered a query.

Not saying all users are like that but it only takes one, so when the boss calls you in to correct an error because somebody did something that in fact would be the designers fault how much would you charge them??.

As a thought did you use access Version 2 to 2003?

Dreamweaver · Aug 3, 2019

Am I right calling what is now the navigation panel the control panel which we used up to 2007 been trying to find a picture without any luck.

The enduring nature of Access

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