Access Cookbook - Ken Getz [5]
Chapter 16
Smart Tags were introduced in Office XP, but they weren't available in Access until now. This chapter shows you how to use the built-in smart tags in your applications, attaching them to form controls or to fields in a table. You'll learn to configure smart tags interactively or by writing code. You'll also learn how to extend smart tag functionality by creating your own custom smart tags.
Chapter 17
Microsoft .NET and Access live in two different programming worlds, but you can use a set of interoperability tools to bridge the two worlds. This chapter shows you how to take advantage of these tools to call a .NET component from an Access application. You'll also learn how to call a .NET web service from Access, and how to manipulate the .NET objects returned by some web services. You'll learn how to retrieve data from an Access database using ADO.NET. And you'll learn how to automate an Access report from a .NET application.
Chapter 18
One of the strengths of Access is its ability to work with data from many disparate sources. XML has emerged as a dominant standard for exchanging data between applications, and Access now enables you to work with this data. In this chapter you'll learn how to import and export XML data and schema, and how you can use XSLT to reformat XML data. For example, you'll see how to use XML technologies to export a report to an HTML or ASP Web page, preserving the look and feel of the original Access report.
What We Left Out
To keep this book to a reasonable length, we have made some assumptions about your skills. First and foremost, we take it for granted that you are interested in using Microsoft Access and are willing to research the basics in other resources. This isn't a reference manual or a "getting started" book, so we assume you have access to that information elsewhere. We expect that you've dabbled in creating Access objects (tables, queries, forms, reports, and pages) and that you've at least considered working with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications, the programming language included with Access). We encourage you to look in other resources for answers to routine questions, such as "What does this Option Explicit statement do?" For example, see Access Database Design & Programming, Third Edition, by Steven Roman (O'Reilly) or VB & VBA in a Nutshell by Paul Lomax (O'Reilly)
To get you started, though, following are basic instructions for what you'll need in order to use the solutions in this book. For example, you'll encounter requests to "create a new event procedure." Rather than including specific steps for doing this in each case, we have gathered the most common techniques you'll need into this section. For each technique we've included a help topic name from the Access online help, so you can get more information. The procedures here are not the only way to get the desired results, but rather are single methods for achieving the required goals.
How Do I Set Control Properties?
In the steps for many of the solutions in this book, you'll be asked to assign properties to objects on forms or reports. This is a basic concept in creating any Access application, and you should thoroughly understand it. To assign properties to a control (or group of controls), follow these steps:
In design mode, select the control or group of controls. You can use any of the following methods (each of the items here refers to form controls but works just as well with reports):
Single control
Click on a single control. Access will mark it with up to eight sizing handles—one in each corner, and one in the middle of each side of the control, if possible.
Multiple controls
Click on a single control, then Shift+Click on each of the other controls you want to select. Access will mark each of them with sizing handles.
Multiple controls