General discussion thread for Access Zone (3-Jan-2014)

Beyond that,  I think it's pretty obvious at this point is that they have no plans to change (the white friggin background) it.

It's pretty obvious that it is an issue.  When folks ask me why I go to church, I say that if you don't give grace an opportunity to enter your life, it won't.  I'm reminded of the story of the corrupt judge and the widow.  The judge eventually gives the widow justice because she hounds him relentlessly.  Or the story the other day of the guy whose folks brought him into the country illegally as a child, and while they became citizens and he became a lawyer, it took him 12 years to win the right to practice.  Or an acquaintance who has been shafted by workers' compensation for the last 12 years who may FINALLY get what all of his doctors have always said was his due.

It ain't going to get fixed unless TPTB are reminded that the site does NOT look or work well at 1600 x 900 or 1080p and that the whiteness should be toned down to some shade or tint of EE blue.  It may be pretty obvious that some folks don't intend to fix it.  It should also be obvious that other folks aren't going to quit asking.

And it's not like it is hard to do, either.  Just git 'er dun.

Scott, does F.lux allow you to customize all 4 monitors independently?

No. But for a freebie, it ain't bad.

the site does NOT look or work well at 1600 x 900 or 1080p and that the whiteness should be toned down to some shade or tint of EE blue.

One of my monitors runs that resolution, and it looks perfectly fine.

The whole point is this - there seems to be very little clamor over this, and there are just as many people who find the site pleasing and the color scheme appropriate. If they fix the issue to your satisfaction you'd have just as many people fussing about that (if not more).

I think that's where it's at and why it hasn't been changed.

I'm not trying to minimize anyone's complaints, but at the end of the day, it's hard to make it right for everyone (if not impossible), especially with something like this.

Jim.

The whole point is this - there seems to be very little clamor over this, and there are just as many people who find the site pleasing and the color scheme appropriate. If they fix the issue to your satisfaction you'd have just as many people fussing about that (if not more).

There is very little clamor from Experts in general--although we are the ones who might be expected to look at the site the most, and getting it to work the way WE want is an important part of the financial equation for EE.

Another important thing to remember is that the audible quantity of clamor is about two orders of magnitude below the quantity of dissatisfaction.  More than a few businesses have packed it in with a plaintive 'But nobody ever SAID anything was wrong, they just all stopped frequenting us!'  If you're smart, you realize for every out-loud bitch there's a hundred silent grousing.  MS figured everyone would get over the loss of the Start Menu.

Instead, they've just deferred buying new computers

EE has to get a nominal number of folks to be willing to pay a nominal amount for answers, and develop a community willing to be able to ask and answer questions for free.  There are more than a few sites that permit the user to skin the interface.  It ain't that retarded to ask to be able to tune down the whiteness to my liking.  The site already keeps track of all sorts of stuff about me.  It's not that hard to tell it to use a CSS file that it'll build from choices I make in my Profile Page.

THAT would be a good tweak to profiles.

getting it to work the way WE want is an important part of the financial equation for EE.

If by "WE" you mean the entire Expert community, then that's a bit presumptuous on your part. You don't speak for me, as an example, since I'm satisfied with the new interface and have absolutely no trouble with the color scheme.

There are more than a few sites that permit the user to skin the interface.

I think that's a great idea, but to presume that it's a simple matter to make a change like that is ... well, presumptuous (again). You have no idea of the changes needed to make something like this happen (nor do I), so it's hard to make the argument that it would be simple.

It ain't that retarded to ask to be able

"Retarded" ... really?? That's somewhat beneath a person of your obvious intellect.

@Scott
Sigh.

"Retarded" ... really??

From Merriam-Webster; "slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development : characterized by mental retardation"  You may want some PC synonym if you wish that combines inability, naiveté, foolishness and simplicity together with unhappy modifiers.  'Stupid' doesn't quite cut it, as foolish or stupid people may fail to grasp something, while mentally handicapped folks are unable to grasp something--big difference. Or you can use the word that has that meaning already.  My request "ain't that retarded" which is to say it IS not made from ignorance, naiveté or an inability to grasp the issues involved, and should not be dismissed with scorn.

Prejudgment is anathema--but so is political correctness.  Everyone has an inherent right to dignity -- but a spade has to be called a spade, too.

"If by "WE" you mean the entire Expert community, then that's a bit presumptuous on your part."  I don't mean the entire Expert community--that's a lot of folks.  I speak for myself.  On the other hand, in a community as large as EE, there's going to be a lot of 'ditto's' when someone grouses.  And I won't say that it is presumptuous of you to think that I am a lone voice in the wilderness--because I am very certain that YOU know that I am not alone in my dissatisfaction with the V10 UI.  You've participated in enough threads where the polite unhappiness has been expressed to know that I am not alone :)

I wonder if EE has ever done a thumbs-up-thumbs down query of all ranked Experts about anything.  I don't think you mean to argue with the statement: "Getting it to work the way WE want is an important part of the financial equation for EE."  You may wish to assert that it does work to engage, attract and retain Experts as is, but you have no more--and no less -- of a quantitative basis for your assertion than I do for mine.

"You have no idea of the changes needed to make something like this happen (nor do I), so it's hard to make the argument that it would be simple. "  Actually, I DO have an idea of the changes needed--and they are doable, if the will to make them so exists.

@Nick,
While I understand the message you're trying to convey, there are people who would prefer that the word "Retarded" not be used to describe something negative.  Many (myself included) have loved ones who are mentally disabled and this word has been overused and abused by kids and adults alike because of ignorance or lack of empathy.  

Ron

@Ron

The unfortunate human need to rank any collection, to identify with the higher rank and to denigrate the lower rank will not go away, sadly.  When one target falls out of fashion, another is invariably selected.  As I have said, everyone has an inherent right to dignity.  Dropping a word from common use does nothing to change underlying attitudes, and if nothing to change attitudes is done, a new synonym is generated with the same damned dog-whistle connotations.

I find the political correctness regarding intellectual disabilities to have been particularly damaging.  Locally, the intellectual disabilities charity decided to re-brand themselves from the 'mentally handicapped association' to 'the association for community living.'  Their visibility, funding, fundraising and influence dropped off a cliff as a result.  So much so, that a new re-branding exercise is being contemplated.

There have been many who have been wounded by ignorance and lack of empathy.  The world would be a better place if folks thought more carefully before speaking and deriving pleasure from the distress one causes another were universally condemned, instead of being generally tolerated.  For those who have someone with a metal disability in their lives, I hope that you take the unique joy -- and there definitely can be joy -- from the situation and that the hardships that come with it are no more than you can bear.

Looking for comments on my new article, Understanding and Using CommandBars - Part II

I've got a weird bug on my hands.
I've got a report with a sub-report that runs very nicely in A2003.
The sub-report has 4 textboxes
SubAssemblyName, Make, Model, & SerialNumber, none of which are permitted to be null, and therefore none of them are null.

CanGrow is not an option, so when the ReportHeader_Format runs, it has a look at the TextWidths of all these fields and fudges the size of the textboxes to make it all work.

Works nicely in A2003.
In A2010, it'll throw 3021 no current record errors
WTF!

A subreport for which there is no record shouldn't (and in A2003 doesn't) run at all.
In A2010 if you close the debugger, the report then successfully renders after the standard MS Access message that a macro is preventing the report from rendering is acknowledged.  And, the page (one detail record per page) of the report that throws this error first very clear DOES have a record that should make the subreport render--and after closing the debugger, it does render.

And the error -- and subsequent debugger closing -- only need to occur once.  Yet, there can be many pages where the subreport is required and the error doesn't pop for all of them.

I can put in error-handling for the 3021, but why should that be needful?

Any ideas?

How is the report data source set up? Queries and subQs?

Could an outer join be giving back a null?

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28329950/General-discussion-thread-for-Access-Zone-3-Jan-2014.html?anchorAnswerId=39893657#a39893657

You really should post this as a question.

This was a question with SeyerIT recently.  Same problem.   3021 in a report.  It was related to the query.  Switching the query to a view solved the issue, although we never really got to the bottom of it.

 And Scott's right, please post this as a question.

Jim.

It isn't a question in the typical sense of a Question because the resolution is going to be adding in error handling for a 3021 that shouldn't occur.  I posted it here because a) it may be a bug that others who follow this thread may have encountered before or b) it may be a bug that someone here may encounter in the future.  It could conceivably be an article, perhaps.

The subreport is based on a query that pulls all the possible records from the table where the data is stored.  The Master/Child relationship takes care of ensuring that the only records required for a particular master detail record display.  And it all works perfectly in A2003 and has for years.  At the moment, I am working on changing how the report is delivered.  For years, it was printed out, 300+ pages, separated by client, stuffed in envelopes and then mailed.  Now there is a desire to open it filtered by each client, render that client's bit as a PDF and email it.

Doing that on an A2010+ box is much more efficient because of the built-in capability to save to PDF that those boxes possess, but now this bug crops up.  It's not as bad as the one the bug that disallows the shrinkage of subreports in A2007+ that still isn't fixed (it's darned annoying to have to have 7 subreports all 0.0007" tall and 0.0007" apart on a report to make it work -- because you have to know that they aren't lines and where they are to right-click them and choose 'open sub-report in a new window'

I don't do much developing in anything other than A2003 because we're running a mixed environment.  But I keenly miss the dropdown list of objects on A2003 Formatting(Form/Report) toolbar when I have to troubleshoot problems like this.

Nick67

Interesting...and painful.
The very action of putting On Error GoTo into the subreport code cause Access 2010+ to hang when the report is run.  The code never runs, no breakpoint gets hit, it just hangs.  I'll have to see if I can get a sample worked up for folks to play with.

Nick67

Nick,

 Please open a question for this.

Jim.

Ah,

It IS the same old bug.
After A2003, if you dynamically re-arrange controls in a report section, you can no longer use (in this case for the detail section) Me.Detail.Height = 0 as a method to suck out any newly created whitespace that resulted from the re-arrangement.

Things go bang! or whimper! and do not play nice.
So, I shrank my subreport down to 0.0007" and let CanGrow do its thing, and therefore no longer need to try to shrink the detail section.  PITA.

First reported to MS 6 years ago today on 28-Feb-2008 on SRX080217600401
Three versions and six years later, it's still not fixed.  It came about because MS introduced split forms -- and the object type underlying a subreport and subform is the same, or so they said.  Sample attached for anyone who wants to take a gander.  Some elements of the bug in A2007 SP0 have returned apparently.  In that version, the bug also manifested with 'no current record' problems.  SP1 and later, there'd be records but just hangs or crashes.  The crashing is now fixed, and you get a phantom error -- until you try to handle that, and then you get an app hang.

Sigh.
So, Jim, it's as fixed as it is going to get

Nick67
bugged3.mdb

Here's another interesting change between A2003 and A2010+
Applying a filter to a form using VBA in A2003 implicitly causes a .Requery
In A2010+, an explicit .Requery is required.

I have a form that you put two date parameters into and click a button to display a filtered recordset.  Nothing displays on load, as the form is based on a parameter query that requires the two dates. (Now looking at it, I can see that the filtering in the VBA code is superfluous because the parameter query is the exact same as the filtered query.  A straight .Requery would have done the job)  Click the button after entering two valid dates and the form displays records.

In A2010, the form does NOT display any records after clicking the button.  A .Requery is required to get the form to load records.  Interesting but annoying!

What exactly does "the button" do here:

"does NOT display any records after clicking the button"

Are you use the Recordset object of the form to display data?

The button formats a .Filter string, and toggles .FilterOn=True

If Me.FilterOn = False Then
    Me.Filter = "qryRepairItems.date between #" & Me.StartDate & "# and #" & Me.EndDate & "#"
    Me.FilterOn = True
    Me.cmdApplyFilter.Caption = "Remove Filter"
Else
    Me.Filter = ""
    Me.FilterOn = False
    Me.cmdApplyFilter.Caption = "Apply Filter"
End If

Select allOpen in new window

Works nicely in A2003.
But it won't load anything in A2010 without a .Requery

wow ... not good !

It was a bit of head-scratcher as to why it worked in A2003, but not in A2010+
The remove filter element wasn't working quite the way I wanted anyway, so I rewrote it

If Me.cmdApplyFilter.Caption = "Apply Filter" Then
    Me.Filter = "qryRepairItems.date between #" & Me.StartDate & "# and #" & Me.EndDate & "#"
    Me.FilterOn = True
    Me.cmdApplyFilter.Caption = "Remove Filter"
    Me.Requery
Else
    Me.Filter = "qryRepairItems.date between #1/1/1999# and #1/1/1999#"
    'Me.FilterOn = False
    Me.cmdApplyFilter.Caption = "Apply Filter"
    Me.Requery
End If

Select allOpen in new window

That works good in both.

The form had originally started life displaying all the records--but given that it was superfluous (since they always need some filtering, why load anything before the filter?) I pushed the value used in the filter into the underlying query as parameters.  That fixed loading a boatload of useless records on Open (and broke the remove filter bits--but nobody noticed or cared)  It was all good until the form was getting some major reworking to email reports instead of printing them.

Then it was noticed that the form didn't function for A2010+ users.  If budget allows we may standardize of A2013 later this year as support for O2003 is ending.  I don't know if I am looking forward to that.  Native PDF support is a big plus, but there is still so much pain in dev'ing on A2007+

And O2013 is just plain ugly in my opinion. TPTB find it attractive enough, though.

In IE11 the comment formatting bar is hatched, today.  I can see 'H2' and 'Code'
I can mouseover and get underlines on more elements, but not see them.

<<Native PDF support is a big plus, but there is still so much pain in dev'ing on A2007+>>

 Not as big as you think, there's no way to control it from VBA.  Also watch out with A2013, where many features were dropped (amazing how many DBF files are still out there) and it's the last version that you can use if you really don't like the ribbon (still supports command bars, A2013 does not).

Jim.

On another note, these were just posted which are video's from the last SharePoint conference.  Haven't watched them all yet, so don't know what's good or not, but this shows you where Access is at.

 And if you don't think Access Desktop apps are dead, just watch the first three minutes of the first link.

Jim.

SPC204: Anyone can build a SharePoint App with Microsoft Access
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC204
 
SPC338: The 'how to' guide for selling and managing SharePoint Apps built using Access
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC338
 
SPC335: Rich extensions to SharePoint Apps using Microsoft Access
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC335
 
SPC 348: Update on InfoPath and SharePoint Forms
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC348

"still supports command bars, A2013 does not)."
Well ... the CommandBar object model is still there ... and any custom bars will appear on the Add-Ins menu. But you can no longer make the Ribbon go away and only see your custom bar -like you can in A2010.
But most importantly - you need the commandbar object for Right Click menus. And a new tool is in development as we speak to create custom bars - especially Right Click menus.

mx

I think saying "Access desktop is dead" is a misnomer. The desktop side of Access and the tools are still there and is definitely *not* going away. And as far as I'm concerned, A2010/A2013 has everything I need to build any desktop app I want, as I've been doing for years. And with A2013, I can have a real SQL Server backend hosted by Microsoft !

@mx
You've got the bandwidth to make all the Cloudy stuff happy.
Me, not so much.
My ISP claims I should be getting 15 Mbps
dslreports.com says about 2.5 Mbps.

I tried pushing up the back-end of my app to Azure, and linking the frontend
Meh, the performance was pretty poor.
Tried to get the Azure Sync stuff to work.
Fuggetaboutit.
Dropped the project for quite a while, as it was all freebie trial Azure resources.
Or not.
MS was stealth billing ~$11/mo for holding the 300 MB of SQL Server data that I wasn't using because the Sync tools don't work as advertised.
Color me highly unimpressed.
Azure at that point was also not going to work with a DHCP-addressed client, so that was a non-starter.

" I can have a real SQL Server backend hosted by Microsoft ! "
Yup, but I haven't been able to do anything useful or cost effective with it yet!

I guess the saying: "Your results may vary" applies here :-)

mx

I guess the saying: "Your results may vary" applies here :-) -- mx

And I wonder what a flaky internet connection will do for corruption with Azure.

I'm now telecommuting. I get 5MB down/.7 up. But it is AT&T UVerse. I typically drop my internet connection about twice a day, if not more. What will editing a record look like? Would you have to build everything ADO? With all the attendant record handling?

I don't believe in the cloud for DB management. About the only way is if the ISP and webpage are together. But no client server setup.

Indeed.
That's been the problem with the whole Cloud push.
There's been no acknowledgement from MS that 'Your results may vary'
They'd better get a clue pretty quick.
They yanked Exchange out of the successors to SBS.
I am now left with some very expensive quandaries
Put Server Essentials on one box, Exchange on another and license everything (+++$)
Put Server Essentials on one box, and cloud-contract Exchange (poor performance and ++$)
Put Server Essentials on one box and pay monthly for O365 (Poor performance and ++$)
Or dump MS completely and go Open Source (poor performance + retraining)

They gotta get a clue than not everyone is mobile or on fibre.

<<I think saying "Access desktop is dead" is a misnomer.>>

 I'm saying "dead" in the sense that Microsoft is not going to work on it.  It's entirely clear that their leaving it behind.  In fact I have to say, I'm a bit miffed at the moment.  Watch that first link and the first three minutes; they basically stabbed every desktop developer in the back to make the web side sound wonderful.  

 Nothing they said is really not true, but they presented only one side of the coin, and until now its all been fine.  I'm getting awfully tired of hearing about the new "web wonder boy" that really can't do squat when it comes to app development.

  I had to laugh though, in the very next slide, they show the desktop side co-existing with the web, so you still can have things like VBA.

  Obviously you'll be able to develop with it for many years, but I would be shocked if you see any bug fixes or real work done on it.

 Just today I answered a question about a DB corrupting and "Chinese characters" flooding the record; well I have the same problem at a client and their using A2007 with the accdb format, so the problem has been with us for seven years and its still not fixed and I it ever will be.

Jim.

JimD

I can't get any usable volume on your first link in Chrome or IE.
They are links from a SharePoint conference, though.
My sister is caught in SharePoint hell.  I sent her this link (since updated)
She didn't find the 40 points to be jokes, but rather grimly serious truths.
http://paulswider.com/sharepoint-jokes/

Back pre-2007 Beta Dany Hoter & company showed the beginning of this SharePoint obsession to the NDA's invitees.  No one was impressed.  When asked what the hell the point was given that absolutely nobody in the dev community asked for or wanted this was "SharePoint is a billion dollar business"

They'd better grab a clue pretty quick that neglecting the VBA community is going to kill the billion dollar Office goose.  Ballmer's gone--but the new guy doesn't have much time left to figure out that they haven't been minding the store while they've been chasing pretty baubles.

If you Google "SharePoint MS Access" one of the top 10 links is this:
http://accessexperts.com/blog/2011/06/15/sharepoint-and-access-how-do-they-fit-together/
The author doesn't realize he hits the nail right on the head:
"SharePoint solves a different set of problems exactly the same way as Access does: it enables *non*-web-designers to build web pages quickly and without any specialized knowledge because it’s merely a part of their workflow and not their livelihood. Likewise, it enables workers to manage files without having to think about the organization of the files, backing up the files and how they would find the files again. SharePoint helps the company saves money by reducing the overall IT administration in contrast to traditional file sharing/networked hard drives, management of documents and so forth. Some people has suggested that SharePoint be thought of as a platform providing easy-to-use building blocks, and suddenly the analogy from Access is much more accurate; we get to build web applications or develop a certain document management strategy at far less risk and expenses than if we built one from scratch."

The only thing the author is completely oblivious about is that the line-of-business applications that you develop in Access are designed to obviate the need for a document management solution.  You enter data and generate reports: no steeenkin' documents needed here.  Integrating Access and SharePoint always was a bit of a pointless exercise.

Sigh.

Good Lord!
I mean, I knew that the whole web app things was a primitive waste of time, but when your trumpeting cascading comboboxes as the best thing since sliced bread, the problems must be much worse than I thought:
http://blogs.office.com/2013/09/09/what-are-the-top-3-updates-we-should-make-in-access-web-apps/

it enables *non*-web-designers to build web pages quickly and without any specialized knowledge because it’s merely a part of their workflow and not their livelihood.

This is always scary to have people think this way.

How many of us have a Access genius or better cert because of non-Access developers building a database and the design was horrible.

Way back when I was the webmaster on a site I would use Word 97(?) to turn a list into a table and then dump it out to an HTML format. That was the quickest way to do it. But then I had to go back with a text editor and take out the extra unneeded HTML code. It cut down the file size by two-thirds. I can't see SharePoint being any better; just like most code generating software.

From JimD's first link above
"Come to this session to learn how power users can easily and quickly build SharePoint apps with a full SQL back end without writing any code. You'll learn how to create rich UI SharePoint apps using Access with low to no involvement or impact from IT."

MS has been full-on thinking this way for almost a decade.  It isn't scary, it is frustrating.  You CANNOT build a good data-centric app without some grasp of normalization and dataflow.  Failing to iterate the tools we use in pursuit of the quoted chimera above is demoralizing.

Thanks for the clarification.

>  there are a truck load of questions in the PAQ that are worthless because
> the links have gone dead.

That's of course a valid point.

>  "Big Red Resource", which were nothing more than content farms.   They simply crawled
> the web and offered up links to other web sites and had no original content of their own.

Is this the same as http://www.bigresource.com/ ?
Because that site, which often is ranked high at Bing searches, is totally useless. It's so bad that I even complained about this to Bing with no result other than a bla-bla answer.

>  There are other things going on at EE in a big way which I can’t talk about,

Fair enough, but when you can, couldn't we have proper information please, so we won't get caught by surprise as it so often has happened.

/gustav

'Big Resource' = useless resource. I NEVER click on one of those links.

So Jim ... can we point to Microsoft KBs ?  Clearly, those pages are not going to cut and paste well ?

mx

gustav,

<<Is this the same as http://www.bigresource.com/ ?>>

  Yes, sorry, that's the one I meant.  There were a couple of other like that out there.  You'll notice that they've entirely disappeared from Google results.

Jim.

Joe,

<<So Jim ... can we point to Microsoft KBs ?  Clearly, those pages are not going to cut and paste well ?>>

  Yes, but keep in mind that it should support your answer and only in rare cases be the answer.   You should add something that makes it clear your familiar with the content your pointing to.

 For example, you could point to the FAQ on Jet security, and say something like "Take a look at question 19 in the FAQ as it directly answers your question".   Also add in any other comments that would help the OP such as "and watch out for a workgroup file which has the same name as your DB except for the extension, which can sometimes be a problem "

  But not simply a "read this: <link>"

  In other words, make sure your comment has value other then just pointing to something.   And again, sometimes just pointing to other content is the answer.    I basically did that just the other day on a ODBC error 3146 question.  There is a MSKB article that spells out exactly how your error trapping code needs to be modified.  It will happen, but we need to try our best to avoid it if we can.

 And as the guidelines point out, the type of content your pointing to should be taken into account when using it.  A KB article at a vendors site is much less likely to die compared to something on a individual's blog.

 Links to a competing Q&A sites however are definitely no longer allowed and posts that contain them will be deleted (or edited if the comment still makes sense after removing the link, but in most cases, it will be a delete because witht he link removed, they won't).

 Links to previous questions or articles on EE are always allowed and is something I think we've never done a good job of doing thanks mostly to the search.   Those are golden because it keeps the user on the site.

Jim.

<<If you have no real-world experience in the matter, then go find another question where you do have real-world experience.>>

  I think though I would add to that a bit.   One of the nice things about EE is it is a place to learn for everyone, not just the asker's.

 There are times when you might take a stab at a question knowing part of the answer.  For example, if it has been sitting for a while with no comments, or knowing that it's never been asked before and is pretty odd ball, so chances are it won't get a comment.

 One like that just popped up this morning.  It was on detecting if a laptop was in tablet mode or not.  I was pretty sure it was going to be a windows API call, and most likely be a call to GetSystemMetrics().

 While I didn't have direct prior experience, I felt I was probably 90% of the way there and was something that would be interesting and wanted to learn a bit about.

  So I took a stab at it.  May turn out not to be the case, but as long as your clear with the OP that you really don't know the answer, they usually appreciate getting pointed in the right direction at least.

 But the point is that in general, you should mainly try to comment on things you know directly about.

 If you do take a stab at something and come up short, or a question takes off in a direction you don't expect, nothing wrong with asking for some input on the notify thread.   That's one of the things it's there for.

 Most of you know all of this already,  but just understand that the focus is being shifted back more towards the way we were in how we approach questions and comments.

Jim.

I agree.  If I want to get better at a topic, I start visiting the open questions in that zone.  I get to see what the SMEs in that zone are posting and the questions give me keywords for searches on that topic.

I'm old enough that many other older technologies have had similar problems whose solutions are still applicable in this new arena.  Then I have to learn more about this new environment in order to provide a solution comment with proper syntax and context.  Even if I don't comment, I've learned something.

Here are helpful hints:
* add new zones to your My Topics list.
* create a custom search and save it to your Saved Searches list.  
Note: If you edit any of these saved searches, be aware that the default action is to not save the changes or to create a new search.  You will need to change the drop down list to update the existing search.
* click the Monitor link on any particularly interesting question.  You will receive email updates when the question thread is updated.  Also, the question will appear in the Notification List at the top right of your EE page. (look for the bell icon with a red box with a white number in it)

"You should be posting content based on your own real-world experience, and not something you come across as the result of the search."

On the other hand, I'm SURE everyone here has become smarter because of something (Access related) that they came across as the result of a search.

Kind of ironic, huh ?

Just sayin' ...

mx

This is probably not the right venue (certainly on topic), but you may want to check out the comment here for a link to a blind link to a competing site:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28416362/Default-SQL-instancr.html?anchorAnswerId=40011478#a40011478

<<<There aren't even words.  I took the time to clean up all the typos in the post below and hit submit.  Whereupon the post was lost and I was thrown back to the logon screen--which has the 'keep me logged in' box selected.  I'll be damned if I'll throw away the proof reading time twice.  Because that crap happens often enough, I composed the post in notepad.  I should have edited there too.  Nick67>>>

The Greek chorus instructs, but the audience remains silent.
Perhaps the chorus should regard the silence as ominous.
"...as I'm sure it will develop into a discussion."
Or not.

Principle #6 from our safety manual: "Safety is a human endeavor."
Folks ask me what that means.  It is simple enough.  In ANY undertaking that is a human endeavor, it is wise to understand that people will behave like people--and not in any wishful, namby-pamby manner.  Failing to account for how people will ACTUALLY act when setting policy is foolish.  The law of unintended consequences is always there, and should be accounted for if good results are desired.

So, let's look at the new 'let's deal with Google issues by killing links' policy.  

1. Now back in my day, and let's face it, all of us that follow this thread aren't wet-behind-the-ears, there was a little thing called attribution and plagiarism.  People got, and still get, surprisingly upset about such things.  So when you had an idea that was not entirely of your own devising, you gave credit to the originators and a reference back to the source material.  That'd be a hyperlink.  Which is not to permitted anymore.
      1a. Human endeavor:
            Will people copy-and paste swaths of text and not attribute?
            Will scads of unattributed text lead to copyright infringement problems?
            Will people re-invent the wheel and paraphrase everything?
            Will people not bother Answering anymore?
            Has anyone thought this through?
      1b.  Modding
            Who will mod this policy and how will it affect their work load?
            Are they to murder only links or are they to be the fair-use copyright judges as well?
            Who shall be legally liable for failing to suppress copyright infringement?
            The poster?
            The collective modders of the TA?
            The site?
      1c.  What constitutes and unacceptable link?
            Will the goalposts move? After all, most MS Access 2003 help links are broken, and the periodic reorganization of MS's site has ALWAYS broken many MSDN links.  KB links tend to be stable, although after a product goes dark, you can have a great deal of fun finding content.  Go ahead and look for a download of WIA.dll as an exercise in how even MS links become NFG.  The web is dynamic.  To say some links are not acceptable because they are volatile is nice.  Define then just exactly what is too volatile for use
      1d.  Who's on the list of 'competitor sites'?
            I take it that the mods have been handed a list of links to whack.  Do they have an automated tool for that?  Or do they have to troll through the content posted in their chosen TA for links to whack.  Do me a favor.  Post what sites I needn't bother posting a link to because the mods will kill the link or whack the post entirely.  THEN I can decide whether to post an Answer at all.

2. "...many “Experts” are now nothing more than what's referred to as "Google Monkey's"  I predate Google, and I suspect everyone following this thread predates Google.  Back in the day, you had a hard-won list of Favorites (or Bookmarks if you were a Netscape dude) that were your go-to sites to work on technical issues.  Finding modem drivers was ALWAYS a particularly difficult and intricate art.  Google certainly made things much easier...but while a collection of monkeys banging at a keyboard might eventually bring up a result that includes the entire collected works of Shakespeare, we might not live long enough to see it.  You HAVE offended me.
      2a.  Being a 'Google Monkey' is not as easy as it looks.  Questioners are Asking because they have not been able to 'Google Monkey' themselves an answer.  The keywords and phrases to search and the ability to parse the results for crap are important (BigResource I am looking at you.  Stack too, a lot of the time.  Brevity is nice and all, but the chain of logic can be hard to discern)  The ability to peruse an initial set of results and drill down in them to find secondary or tertiary links -- or to decide to refine the search query are also important.  And none of it so easy that it should be dismissed as an Expert being a Google Monkey.
      2b.  What a DJ is to music and a news editor is to current events is what an Expert is to a set of Google search results.  There's a high pressure pipeline of results.  An Expert is able to cull those down to a manageable and informative set for an Asker.  To hold in contempt of the Experts' role as an intermediary between Google and an Asker and to hold up as esteemed the Experts' role as an author of new material is foolish.  Both are highly useful to the Asker.
      2c.  If you are going to have a ridiculous policy regarding links, then you are going to wind up with comments like "Google 'Nick MS Access IMAPI2 VBA' and look at the result from social dot msdn dot microsoft dot com'  People got mad the last time I sued the proper term to describe such behavior.  So let's call it inane and retrograde.  And if such peregrinations are too hard to Experts to stomach, perhaps you won't have Answers at all.

3. "If you have no real-world experience in the matter, then go find another question where you do have real-world experience."
      3a.  The find-a-question experience is badly broken.  It has been since the new site rollout.  It hasn't been fixed and it won't be fixed.  I don't use it.  I can't.  And I'll say it again (put your fingers in your ears and say blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, Netminder) It's all way too bright-white and way too much whitespace.  That won't get fixed either
      3b.  Much of my 'real-world' experience comes from being piqued by interesting questions, researching answers, building, posting, and iterating samples.  Little of which I ACTUALLY use in production.  So, check, don't bother learn an Answer and then teach it.  That's not what EE wants.
      3c.  Ok, WhackAMod back off from 3b "Instead we want the answer to be able to outlive its link whenever possible and that calls for having enough experience and ability to explain the solution to others. If you can do that, especially on a new concept that you are learning whilst solving the problem, everyone wins."  While that's nice and all that he backed away from 3b, if a mod is going to second guess all of the links that I embed in post to show how I learned the Answer, and therefore teach it effectively, exactly how is that supposed to work?

4.  "Links to previous questions or articles on EE are always allowed and is something I think we've never done a good job of doing thanks mostly to the search.   Those are golden because it keeps the user on the site."  I like you Jim, so I'll swallow the snark.  I've got a half-million points...and the dashboard shows that I've answered 16 Questions. Googling 'Nick67 experts-exchange' brings up a grand total of 2 Q related links.  Just how am I supposed to create these golden links?  From memory? from the archive of EE emails that I keep?

I've had a weekend to ruminate about this.  I don't know if anger, disgust, indignation or resignation is the appropriate emotion.  Despair and depression perhaps. Unless MS gets it together and puts some oomph into the VBA platform, my contributions here will come to an end anyway as my skill set becomes obsolete.

Nick67

Trust me, we are not all good.
Because no matter how well I build the post, some mod is going to whack my link to Stack.
Don't say they won't because it has already happened.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28388109/update-query-wont-work.html

The post was pretty sparse, but the entire point of the link was to reinforce that my statement wasn't appearing out of my anus, but actually substantiated by other reputable sources, and the post fit in well with a very lengthy discussion.  Even if the link were to die, someone looking at the URL would be able to assess, if not the content, then the reputation of the site the URL used to represent.  You wanna kill the link, then de-URL it, plaintext it.  That may solve the Google problem without pissing off Answerers.

<<If you post a link and nothing but the link as the answer, expect it to get modded.
If you post a link with text like "This works," expect it to get modded.>>

That's nice.  Now, let's have the example of a link to Stack that WON'T get modded.  And if that is not forthcoming, let's have the list of site links that will ALWAYS get modded.  Because EE isn't going to get too many opportunities to mod or delete posts without losing Experts. (And yes, Netminder, I hear you muttering 'he only speaks for himself, and there's more where he came from.'  The canary in the mine only sang for its own enjoyment, and there are plenty of canaries, too)  I will not be bothered to post if I am going to have to constantly worry about being second-guessed.  My time IS precious.  And I am not speaking about just EE.  ANY site that accepts my input in the form of posts that then loses/deletes/mods/edits them in a way that I don't like doesn't get anymore input.

You have built a system where the mod is judge, jury and executioner of a post, without appeal.  You may want to re-think that.  A system where a mod objects to a post, hides it from viewing, and PM's the poster with the content and the objections with an opportunity for the poster to edit as they, and not the mod, see fit may be wise.

Spell out the rules and let the chips land where they may.
Or don't.

@aikimark
If I didn't think the link was appropriate, I wouldn't have posted it.
But it got whacked--and that is tiresome.
One wonders if the content of the link was viewed by @arnold before whacking.
Mods are volunteers, too
The quality of their curating is going to depend on workload.
Human endeavor, again.
An overloaded mod whose job is to kill links to Stack is not going to err on the side of leaving the post as written.

@Jim
< But with that understand that when a policy is enacted, it must be applied consistently across the site and without a policy, you can't hold anyone to anything.>
That's nice.  Now spell out the policy.  And spell out how the mods will apply it in principle.  And then be realistic and say how the mods will apply it in practice.

And nobody has yet addressed what will be then end results: Folks who copy-and-paste far broader swaths of text which may yet be defined as 'content scraping' if Cutts and SO really are in bed together, and which may result in legal issues given that EE is in the poorer monetary position and victory-by-lawyer-cost has a long and dishonorable tradition.  Or inane and tiresome workarounds that maker posters FEEL belittled by the process.  Or no postings at all.

And Google search for EE content is very broken.  And so is EE search for EE content.

Sigh.

@nick,

<<That's nice.  Now spell out the policy.>>

 In case you missed it:

http://support.experts-exchange.com/customer/portal/articles/1162518

<< And spell out how the mods will apply it in principle. >>

 Exactly as it is stated pretty much.   No one is actively going out and looking for these. But if we run over them, we will take action.  This is a culture change which will take years.

<< And then be realistic and say how the mods will apply it in practice.>>

  As aikimark said, and as I mentioned, if you feel a post is deleted unjustly, just say so and we'll have a look at it.

Jim.

I should also mention that this has been in place for months already.  That alone should tell you were taking the slow approach to this.

 I'd have to admit though, I probably was remiss in not posting a link sooner (and I may have, I just don't remember).   Sometimes I think everyone reads the newsletter.

Jim.

@aikimark @JDettman
You mistake the thrust of my comments.
They are much more along the lines of 'beware the Ides of March' than personal complaints.  Across the broad spectrum of my life, I rarely Request Attention.  And I suspect that I am not atypical.

Ask yourselves: "how often do people request to speak to the manager or customer service V.S. simply not frequenting the establishment anymore?"  And then think about the broad cultural spectrum that EE posters inhabit. Bitching may be a very common thing in America.  I'm a Canuck.  Here we just vote silently by going elsewhere, and the bankrupt establishment is left to wonder what the hell went wrong.  What's the mean and standard deviation of EE members in these attitudes?  That's going to be important.

I'm not going to click RA and debate every time a post gets redacted or whacked.  Human endeavor, again.   I've read the policy and have always posted in accordance with the spirit, which is that each Q is a discussion that leads to an Answer.  That hasn't stopped posts from getting whacked or redacted.  I only post these screeds because I give a damn.  If I wasn't emotionally committed, I'd have silently gone away (yes, I hear the muttering.)  Things have gone slowly with the post-whacking, and Google-monkey-labeling.  Perhaps it is well-understood that you are playing with lightning.

As for the newsletter.  I got subscribed in July 2013 and got newsletters through 6-Nov-13.  Then they stopped coming until the 18th of this month.  No changes on my end

@SouthMod
I'd LOL ROFLMAO
Except I am not amused and you have nicely demonstrated the problem.
I can't argue with you.  Which is why the whole RA recourse isn't going to be my cup of tea.

The link has been redacted, so all the assertions you've made regarding it cannot be challenged--since I don't have access to it anymore. But let us for fun say it was

http:// ThoseWhoMayNotBeLinkedTo.../questions/87712/how-do-you-deal-with-null-values-in-columns-of-type-boolean-in-ms-access

Now, I have a documentary link from someone whom I don't know from Jack the Bear stating the Allen Browne (in a link to a reputable site), whom everyone here DOES know from Jack the Bear, that what I have asserted is correct, and later gets down to the guts of it "Yes, Access can handle Null values for other data types, but when I link a table from a DB with boolean-types, Access treats Null like False"  Which is bang-on the problem of the Asker.

Now, you @SouthMod and @arnold, may have decided that the link was irrelevant--but isn't that really the job of the Asker, and any followers-on?  The eggheadcafe link is busted, but anyone poking around can clearly deduce whether it was a junk link (bigresource) or not.  Except they can't.  Someone decided for them.

Like I said, we've never done a good job leveraging our own content.  I'm not really sure why either.   No one else either seems to either and despite anything that's been tried, nothing's caught on.

It isn't really that hard to figure out - and I've heard it several times when I referred to (my own) stuff at EE: The new reader is either not allowed to see the stuff or being bothered so much by attempts to get him to sign up that he gives up.

/gustav

<<It isn't really that hard to figure out - and I've heard it several times when I referred to (my own) stuff at EE: The new reader is either not allowed to see the stuff or being bothered so much by attempts to get him to sign up that he gives up.>>

  That's something different; someone coming from the outside in.  I'm talking about Expert's posting links to EE's own content.  There's no reason you can't post a link to a old EE question, article, or video, but no one ever really does.

 And on the pay wall, that has been changed.  It's now partially down.  You can see all content as a non-member.   Only restriction for non-members at this time is asking new questions.

 The efforts to get you to join up are still there, but even that is being worked on.

Jim.

@SouthMod
You continue to drive home the point about WHY the RA adjudication will be a waste of my time and why I would like a listing of what site links you'll whack -- because I am not minded to have this type of tete-a-tete more than once or twice, and having links and posts deleted much more than a dozen times before throwing in the towel.

1.  At the time the link WASN'T rotted.
2. "Yes, Access can handle Null values for other data types, but when I link a table from a DB with boolean-types, Access treats Null like False" was absolutely on-point and part of the SO post
3. The SO post listed Allen Browne as an MVP
4. 'Allen Browne MS Access' is a VERY good Google keyword.
5. How arbitrarily far down a rabbit hole of postings am I expected to parse links to see if they are broken?
6.  Farther down you'll see that I did post a link to AllenBrowne.com -- but it doesn't spell out nearly so nicely that "Yes, Access can handle Null values for other data types, but when I link a table from a DB with boolean-types, Access treats Null like False" which was the issue to hand.

"What's the point of linking to a site that links to another site?"  That my son is how knowledge is gained-by-accident.  You peruse a cluster of links and glean what you wanted to know -- and many things you didn't know -- by osmosis.  You don't agree.  'Google monkey' is a much harder skill than it seems, despite your contempt for it

Fine.

You get whack my post when it should be up to those who peruse the Q to judge for themselves if that link presented useful content.

Not so fine.

@SouthMod
You've missed the point.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. - Daniel Moynihan
There's a corollary, to that
The reality that someone holds a contrary opinion to your own is a fact in its own right.  You cannot dismiss that fact simply because you do not agree with the opinion - Nick67

It is my opinion -- and I think others share it -- that modding or deleting a poster's content is a hostile and aggressive action.  You are welcomed to disagree.  That doesn't change the fact that I believe that second-guessing my commentary and altering it is an egregious violation of my sense of this community.  Moreover, I do not join or continue to participate in communities that make a habit of such behavior.  And redacting posts leaves very visible evidence that this behavior is occurring.  Perhaps I am alone in this.  I doubt it.

Given that, I don't think that the control of the application of the link policy has been well-thought-out or implemented.  There are things that can be done behind the scenes to alleviate the Panda problem without modding.  The system can have a s#itlist of domain names that, if a link to them is posted, the post gets marked in robots.txt to not be crawled.  The system can be set to plaintext a link that EE doesn't want to be actively clickable.  The mods can be tasked to mod links a couple weeks after points are awarded, so that the link poster involved doesn't notice.  The system can be set to parse the text of a post for unhappy links when preview or submit is clicked and give the poster the opportunity to self-edit.  All of that should be done before modding or deleting is considered as a last resort.

And then, if a mod or deletion is considered, some thought about WHO the poster was should play into the decision.  And some notice, too.  The old saying about at least kiss me before you screw me, you know.

The bottom line: modding content after it is posted is evil.  Everyone, EE, mods, Experts, and Askers is better off if the operational rules that will result in modding are detailed enough and well-communicated enough that no modding will be required.  At present, they are not.

@WhackAMod
No hyperbole.
Your country has the First Amendment to codify it.
Mine has it implicit in common law going back centuries.
The idea that authority should be restrained from constricting the free expression of the community because doing so leads to evil is an ancient one.

You have operational constraints, and imposing them is a human endeavor.  If it has been thought through all the way, great.  If it is understood just how all segments of the community will react and that has been planned for, great.  If it is understood that there is a potential for long-term, permanent negative effects but the risk is worth the payoff, great.

If poorly trained volunteers are being turned loose to do this, and nothing is in place to measure the results and mitigate the consequences, not so great.  You are in a position to judge.  I am in a position to make my thought known for you to assess.  You are in a position to assess where on the inevitable bell-curve of the community I lie.  And then you can act.

I am not given to hyperbole, nor do I think I am an outlier.

Hey, does anyone want to talk Access?
Yes, please.  Even I will talk about MS Access and how I love using it. :)

Incidentally, I think "massive" is an understatement.

Where as I get the concept regarding the link issue and I agree for the most part  ... Just a point of interest here.

It's a very well known and undeniable and indisputable fact that the majority of the Access MVP community (et al) has a serious dislike for EE (excluding myself of course). Which is why the majority of them post on UA (et al).

So ... this somewhat random, and possibly arbitrary deleting of posts by various mods will likely further this dislike.  I'm not sure if this happens on UA (et al) per se ... but I'm guessing not in the same fashion.

Meanwhile, I can safely say that I am pretty sure I have never posted a link to a competing site such as UA, StackOverLoad, etc.

mx

:)
"You have a massive misunderstanding..."
It ain't hard:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

It's an echo of an idea that goes back to at least Socrates and ancient Athens, that authority should not suppress communication.  We have other (some ancient) corollaries to go with it, that authority should in fact safeguard free communication, like the seal of the confessional, the sanctity of the marital bond, the Fifth Amendment and the Chatham House rule.

I think we can leave the topic.

I posted an article today.  You might not be able to see it yet.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Database/MS_Access/A_13519-Printing-many-large-images-in-MS-Access-reports.html

What's the most number and size of digital photographs that you've been able to get an Access report to print?  The present inhouse record is 265 1600 x 1200 pictures.

.. Which is why the majority of them post on UA (et al).

So ... this somewhat random, and possibly arbitrary deleting of posts by various mods will likely further this dislike.  I'm not sure if this happens on UA (et al) per se ... but I'm guessing not in the same fashion.

Oh my - if you regard "arbitrary deleting of posts by various mods" to represent an issue at EE then by all means keep staying away from UtterAccess. The site is driven much like Scientology with a bunch of good people on the ground watched by a layered set of priests who cover over each other. At the top resides a god you never see or read anything from except when he sends you a personal rude blurb when you happen to express anything not agreed by the priests. And your posts are just silently deleted. No message, no explanation, no nothing.
It's terrible and, yes, offending, but you are free to stay off so you can only thank yourself should you feel tempted to participate and waste your time at that site.

At EE you at least receive a well argued answer in a decent tone by decent people like yourself - like this thread.

/gustav

@Nick

One of the problems facing the clean-up of the PAQ is finding and fixing broken links.  There are a LOT of them in EE's knowledgebase.  Once found, I have suggested that these links be changed to point to the copy of the page in the Great Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) from the date the link-containing comment was posted.  I wouldn't object to all links being treated this way as part of the closing process/workflow.

Alternatively, EE would have to create a copy of each external linked page and replace the external link to their cached copy.

Both solutions are imperfect and costly, even with automation.

So, minimizing external links has been implemented as policy.  In part, to improve the quality of the PAQ knowledgebase and to improve EE's page rank scores on Google.  Content is still king.

==============
I have been bitten by broken links that I have posted to my own content.  I had written an article on another web site many years ago.  When answering EE questions that involve the VB random number functions, I would always post a link to that analysis article.  Last year, I discovered that the web site no longer existed.  Steps I took to fix the problem:
* find the article on the GIA
* republish the article here at EE
http:A_11114-An-Examination-of-Visual-Basic's-Random-Number-Generation.html
* search the Internet for all links to that article
* contact the owners of those pages to let them know their link was broken and the URL of the republished article.  One of those links was to a doctoral dissertation (very grateful response on that one).
* manually go through all the EE question threads containing the broken link and post a new comment with the link to the republished article.

It was a labor of love, with heavy emphasis on 'labor'.  There are still broken links on web sites that didn't respond to my webmaster contact attempts.  At least I tried.

I have no trouble with the new link policy. If it means that EE comes out a better resource than before - and I believe it will - then I think that's a good thing. As JimD said we don't really have a problem here in the Access areas, but other TAs are rife with this. Look into the Microsoft Server or Exchange areas if you want to see true Google Monkey behavior.

Now, whether you believe that EE will be better or not is your own personal opinion, of course, and we all know what is said about opinions.

That said, I fail to see how EE redacting a link is a violation of "free expression" or "free speech". As WAM said, that's a bit too histrionic for the situation. IMO, you agreed to the terms when you signed up for EE, and if you don't like them (or the way EE is moving) then you're free to vote the Canuck-adian way and move to greener and less moderated pastures. We'd miss a good Access Expert, but if EE isn't for you, then it isn't for you.

BTW, I'm married to one of those Canuck-adians, so I can legally refer to youse guys as such :)

@Scott McDaniel
<<You are in a position to assess where on the inevitable bell-curve of the community I lie>>
You lie in a different area of the curve than me.  There's always a curve.  It's important to know that there is one, what the mean and sigma of it is, and where one personally lies on it.

But note what @/gustav had to say about UA And your posts are just silently deleted. No message, no explanation, no nothing.
It's terrible and, yes, offending, but you are free to stay off so you can only thank yourself should you feel tempted to participate and waste your time at that site.

I look for the footprints of such behavior before I participate and waste my time.  And yes you're free to vote the Canuck-adian way and move to greener and less moderated pastures.  Indeed, that is my only -- and my nuclear -- option.  Which is a state of affairs to be avoided, if possible.  And the best way to do that is to plainly spell out what site links are going to draw scrutiny, which links a mod will likely leave alone if there's verbiage to go with, and which links an overworked mod is probably going to whack without so much as a by-your-leave.  And no, I shouldn't be left to guess myself at what constitutes a Q&A site (ozgrid) vs a supporting site (mrexcel)  Spell it out, don't be shy.

Eggheadcafe.com is busy becoming nullskull.com.  I wonder if Google is whacking both the scraper sites AND the originator sites with the same oversized stick?  Pretty drastic to completely abandon your brand.

<<Curiously, one site (or rather, family of sites) did manage to avoid the same penalties>>
It ain't what you know, it's who you know.  Same as it ever was.
http://managinggreatness.com/tag/joel-spolsky/
We've had Trello in production for ~3 years, though.  Give him credit. He can get it done.

I wish you could see WHO voted your article helpful -- and then see if they've got open questions.  It's live now https://www.experts-exchange.com/Database/MS_Access/A_13519-Printing-many-large-images-in-MS-Access-reports.html

@Nick,
I was one.

@aikimark
Thanks!

Does anyone else use WIA to manipulate images in Access VBA?
Googling 'WIA MS Access VBA' brings up my article on manipulating the WIA.CommonDialog box as the third result, and Mark & I have an asker working with it.  Then there's my new article.  But is there no one out there doing this stuff?

 And what about burning disks from VBA?
Googling 'ms access vba Imapi2' brings up a post of mine on social.msdn.microsoft.com and an EE Q I've worked to answer up as First & second results, and virtually nothing else.

I am afraid to ask if anyone else gets VBA to write HTML, or uses VBA to write and execute batch files for fear I'll be utterly alone.

being utterly alone could mean you are on the cutting edge!

;(
or the last one in a ghost town.
I'm reminded of that old poker saying: "Look around the table for the sucker.  If you don't see one, it's you"

Are you the first one driving a Tesla, or the last one driving an Edsel?
There's some comfort in numbers

LOL

Anyone having grief with Outlook truncating emails possibly in connection with IE 11?
Like here?  It's driving me insane.  Fortunately, nobody else in the outfit (yet!)
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/e7d4297a-1955-45f8-b5e7-edab0ee08365/outllook-clients-sending-partial-messages-truncated-email-body?forum=outlook

Read the opening post carefully.  I can't tell if there was an EE link and or text in it that was redacted.  If MS is redacting EE links, that ain't good.

Darn, they did redact the link.  The Q is here
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28317874/Outllook-clients-sending-and-recieving-partial-messages.html

That's REALLY not good.

<<I am afraid to ask if anyone else gets VBA to write HTML, or uses VBA to write and execute batch files for fear I'll be utterly alone.>>

I used VBA (Access 2003) to write html web pages quite a bit for an application years ago.  I then used VBA to execute Windows FTP via batch file, calling a VBA generated text file with the list of the FTP commands I wanted to execute.  Worked well for years.
OM Gang

I've got an Access/VBA application that produces two different HTML/VBScript files for one of my clients.  The file types are .HTA, simplifying the UI.

I do the FTP thing -- I suspect that's not as abstruse as the rest.  We've got an industrial pressure monitor that runs Win CE and logs in CSV format and that has an ftp ability.  Access creates the batch file of desire commands using FileSystemObject, and then shells the bacth file to run.  I didn't figure I was alone in that :)

With the web pages, we have occasions when the number or size of the reports to be emailed exceeds what's possible or convenient.  So, Access marshals all the pdf's, builds a hyperlinked spreadsheet of the page's content, creates and dumps them all into a zipfile, creates the html for the resulting page and builds a pre-addressed Outlook message that the page has been created for the recipient.  Very nice.

And then you have the folks who want all that on CD.
So Access takes all of that stuff, and creates an burns a CD with an auto-run routine to make it customer-fool-proof.  But I seem to be alone in that.

So Access takes all of that stuff, and creates an burns a CD with an auto-run routine to make it customer-fool-proof.

There is no such thing as customer-fool-proof. Every time I improve a routine I find they build a better fool. :-(

In my case I need to be very careful about where the data goes because of HIPAA rules. If the data gets into the wrong hands I could personally be on the hook for millions in fines.

Nick, you are going to love the new site, not only is it still bright white, but now the text in the Post a comment section is exceptionally small.  I'm going to need to get one of these lighted hoops my wife uses for making jewelry to read the text.

Will have to see how I like the light blue text on white background

Yeah, on the Dell E228WFP at 1680 x 1050, the Post a Comment text appears to be like 12 pt font in Word only not so dark -- and works for me.  The existing posts look to be about 16 pt with the requisite spacing -- so 70+% of the pixels are white.  The white background is STILL a major PITA.  It's funny to see this question's status as Abandoned!

And the ability to edit the last post if no one else has yet posted is gone.  I'll miss that.  Typos will abound.
On the plus side, the site remembers me -- finally--, and the 'launch' page for the straight-up url if it does remember me looks promising.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much white, though.
Take that top banner blue, lighten it up significantly, and make it the background color.
"Will have to see how I like the light blue text on white background "
The text appears grey to me.

EE=FB ... not bad :-)

Watch any scaling or zoom you might have in your browser.  It makes a big difference.

Jim.

@Netminder
It may not be a bug, but my notification is
"12 people posted comments on the question: General discussion thread for Access Zone (3-Jan-2014) "
Now, you, me, Joe and Dale have posted lately, and just 4 posts.
I read that notification as that there are 12 new posts waiting.
I suspect that it is that 12 Experts have ever posted to the Q.

How many new posts since the last notification is useful.
How many people have ever chimed in is markedly less useful, IMO

Ah, the little gear on the right gives Edit and Delete options!
@Jim.
Browser at 100% zoom and Win7 at default.  Still too white!

Not a bug per se ... but not really abandoned either :-)

Jim just posted, so now it is no longer Abandoned.
So that works -- if the author hasn't posted in X days, it flags and shows how long it's been.
Useful

No, not mobile. On my laptop using Chrome.
OK ... like I said, it's a bug :-)

So far ... new features/functionality looking good

Question:
RE "We've also made changes to the Comment flows on any thread, "

Can you elaborate ?

mx

@Netminder
It'll be hard to say now, since Jim posted and that removed it from Abandoned status

The best part of all this?   This is just the start.  There is a lot more to come in the coming months.  EE is going to be a different place by next year (and in a very good way I think).

Watch Brian's video into for some of the things that are to come...

Jim.

The worst part is white.
Maybe when you see it as an image, it'll be brighter
Use EE -- as a flashlight app!
:) and :(

Fix it -- please!
white.png

Is Deleting comments new?
And I assume only if a subsequent comment has not been posted ?

Nick ... what is the page text/color format on almost every book on the planet. And newspapers and mags as well ?
Seriously ...

Eric,

Black on grey would have been nice.  But it is the font in the Post a comment box that is going to destroy my eyes.

Maybe they could set the font as one of my profile settings, so us old geezers with bad eyes don't have to have a magnifying glass.

LOL!

Overall the feel isn't bad,  Would prefer not to have to click on the toolbox to get to my workspace.

would also be nice to be able to turn off the "See more Solutions", "See more Articles", "See more Videos", and customize the right side with the things I want to see.

@Netminder
Grey on grey may have been great, but it never happened that my eyes could see.
If the background has EVER been anything but white since v10 launch, it wasn't far enough off white to be noticeable.
The missus is a member here
http://disboards.com/faq.php
and they have the functionality to permit you to tweak elements of the page to your liking as the bottom-end CSS sheet that then gets applied when you log in.

You've got enough posts from folks who don't adore the look to provide the evidence that allow the end-user to tweak the look would be great functionality to add.

@mx
Pull out a paperback.
The paper ain't brilliantly white.
There's texture, transparency and other elements that soften eyestrain.
Buy a ream of paper...and a ream of photo paper
There's white, and then there's WHITE.

Most old books were more toward the color of cardboard than white.

@ Netminder ...
I posted that bug ... but now I'm getting emails for EVERY bug report, and they all go to a separate page - that does not show the bug list in a normal tread like this ... for example:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/PRI_2717.html

HELP !!!

Search is still brutally busted
'Nick67 directshow' should turn up
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28327795/MS-Access-code-take-photo-on-tablet-Windows-8.html

It turns up nothing, though.
Plus ca change, and all

Nick,

I typed in directshow into the Search field and came up with 900+ results, then I indicated edit search, clicked the question checkbox, expanded the members option, and typed in Nick67, I got 2 results.

@Eric,

Not sure I want to submit a bug ticket given Joe's comment.

@Joe, when are you going to get to work on testing the CommandBar tool?

It worked for me now too.
Being the good IT guy, I ask: "what changed/"
I have posted in that Q since I did the search -- and now it shows.
Or the search indexes have been getting rebuilt so that it isn't so brutally broken.
@fyed
I am at home on my Inspiron 9400 19" at 11920 x 1200, 100% dpi and 100% IE zoom and yes on this machine the 'Post a Comment' font is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too tiny.  I ain't getting any younger.  I used to see 6 pt font at a half-mile.  Now I need a hand on the PEBCAK's shoulder to see the snafu.

That directshow question.  That was today's fun.  Get Access VBA to capture a webcam image every 15 seconds to a sequentially named JPG file in a folder.  A whack of API and WIA code and we were off to the races.  Looking at all those images, taking one 4 significant figure and one 5 significant figure, and transcribing them into Excel, creating an XY scatter, getting the least-squares regression equation and creating a table of a thousand entries for that equation round out the fun.
Or not.

@Dale ... some tomorrow and Friday ...

I still wish it would say who voted an Article helpful!

@Netminder ...
Once again as of last night, I am receiving apparently all new individual reports. Whereas these are interesting, I don't have time to read each one :-)

Example:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/PRI_2799.html

What to do ?

I did what you suggested a couple of days ago, and they seemed to stop ... but now back a gain.

mx

Might be me missing something but, in my Workspace, I have 12 Topics saved (and indicated) but I can't figure out how to view/access #11 & #12.

Anyone?
OM Gang

@deviousMax.....
Thanks.  I am able to edit my Topics but are we now limited to only 10?  If I maintain more than 10 I don't see how I can access the additional from my Workspace.
OM Gang

OK, reply before I try........
I see that by using the link you provided I can access the additional Topics.  Thanks!
OM Gang

@Sina May ...
Once again as of last night, I am receiving apparently all new individual reports. Whereas these are interesting, I don't have time to read each one :-)

Example:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/PRI_2799.html

What to do ?

I though I had opted out of this a couple of days ago, and they seemed to stop ... but now back a gain.

mx

Umm ... unmonitor where exactly ? can you provide a  Link where to unmonitor ?
thx
ps - yes I saw your response (thx) ... but wasn't sure about the 'cool' silent part :-)

mx

@Modalot ... *which* page exactly (link) ... seems I've lost track ... :-(

I am afraid to post the bug
Hit a formatting tag in the Post a Comment box
The cursor is not positioned between the tags
It is two characters too far to the right.

Create a very long post
Select some text near the top
Choose a formatting tag
The post scrolls farther down the post in some cases.

Both are annoying.

Why would you be afraid to post Nick? Am I too intimidating? ;)

@mx's experience is that posting a bug results in a blizzard of email.
When THAT is fixed, bug posting may be less scary.

And I have had no success in getting all this whiteness toned down, so my confidence in the bug posting is ...muted.  There's enough heavy hitters here that can verify the bug and move it through channels -- like you, for instance, after you've verified it for yourself. :)

Well, I posted what I thought was a bug, and although I have not received the "blizzard of email" that was received during the initial phases of the rollout, I have received about a dozen.  Maybe the option provided above will work.

I'm confused. I had the impression that a link created (using the link icon on the bar) for an article of yours were for an ad-hoc access to that article only and no login should be required.
But it seems that you still need a (free) account to login and view the content and - if a free account is used - the pictures in the article are lost.

I have reported it as a bug:

    https://www.experts-exchange.com/PRI_3048.html

but perhaps that is not the case?

/gustav

all articles should be free
links to questions seem to be free (have used this several times in the past year)

Speaking of bugs - still (Hi Gustav):

But is it mandatory to create a free account to gain access?

Abandoned? Didn't notice. What is that supposed to mean?

/gustav

"What is that supposed to mean?"
Jim D is supposed to have a way such that this does not show for this thread ... since 'abandoned' doesn't really apply.  
So, guess that bug is not fixed yet.

Yes it's not fixed yet.   The bug is that the label shows, but I don't get abandoned notices nor do I get locked out of the question wizard.

 and of course it will disappear now that this comment has been made.

Jim.

My latest article has been published.
If you've ever been stymied by Access's inability to print REALLY large images (5330 x 6484 for example) you may want to have a gander.

Or if you've ever wanted to programmatically resize and crop large numbers of images using VBA.
Or you've ever wanted to programmatically create a spreadsheet listing the path of a whole whack of images, their dimensions, date taken, camera manufacturer and model.
Or if you've ever had a whole whack of pictures that you needed to rotate mixed in with a lot of others that are just fine the way they are, and you wanted to do that programmatically.

Using VBA and Windows, and not even API code, of course.
Turns out that Access is really, really quite an effective tool to do those things.

A pickup truck delivering shingles, and not a Prius, as it were.

Thanks, Nick.  I'd been looking forward to your article.

@aikimark

Is there anything else you wanted to see with WIA image manipulation?
A lot of the rest of the WIA samples are no longer useful because MS decided to go toward DirectShow for webcams, and as a result, getting a Windows 7 WIA-compliant webcam is next to impossible.

I do have an Access app that use WinAPI code to take a snapshot at a configurable interval.
Which can be a very useful thing if you want to take time-lapse images of something.

Nick67

How well does WIA perform in showing images on an Access form?  I had to remove that feature (using an image/picturebox control) from an application because it was so slow and a memory hog.

I take it you mean images on a continuous form?
You flat out can't do that in A2003, because the image control can't be bound to a field containing a path in that version.
And an unbound control on a continuous form doesn't play nice (I've got an article about that)

In A2010, I bound 12000+ full size images to a continuous form.
It chews up about 100K of RAM, and you can't scroll at absolute full tilt because the image rendering slows things down.
Now, there isn't really a good way to dynamically resize 12,000 images on the fly that's going to be faster than what Access is natively doing.

But a routine that resize everything down as a one-off, and an OnCurrent event that would create the 'thumbnail' if it didn't exist might well be faster, since the form really only needs 96 DPI.  I'll build it in the coming days, and let you know.

This was not a continuous form.  The user would select a client and the application would show the pictures taken of that client, one at a time -- slideshow style.  At first, I displayed the pictures on the main form and quickly switched to a different form.

The images were not stored in the database, so this was a non-bound (image) control configuration.

@aikimark

That sounds like a good idea for my main production app.
I'll build it, and if it performs acceptably, I'll write an article about it

On a different note, who runs Access 2010?
I have a question here that I need further confirmation than just myself and the Asker.
In Access 2003, you can group controls.  Access 2013 sees and respects those groupings, and you can change and alter them.
In Access 2010, fully patched, the functionality in the Ribbon is there, but A2010 doesn't see any existing groupings, and doesn't preserve any groupings when you close and reopen the form.  I've created brand new accdb's and tried to create control groupings, and they get lost on close.

Before telling the Asker he should start a bug report with MS, I'd like to get it confirmed that other folks have the same result.

@aikimark

How big were your images?
My form that I've built this on has a timer event every 3/4 of a second
I put a 4" x 3" image control on it and it's rolling through 1600 x 1200 images without perceptibly missing a beat .
It's actually pretty sweet.

I just tried it with much bigger images (4608 x 3456) and it stumbles a bit with those.  If I make the control 8" x 6", it stumbles less.  The farther from native size that Access has to take an image, the more poorly it performs.

So, assuming you have some really large images, I'll play with some WIA code to resize the images, and see how that performs.

These were probably 4 megapixel images.  The pictures weren't on a timer, but shown as a result of the user clicking a command button.

If my client hadn't dropped the image requirement, I would have opened the pictures in one of the image app/accessory/utility programs.

How big was the desired control size for displaying them?

At that time, late 90s to early 00s, we were probably still running 640x480 monitor sizes.  If larger, not much larger.

So the dialog was most likely 1/4 screen sized.

Works like a hot damn!
I ran through one job that had 50 images associated with it.
4" x 3" control, resizing from 4608 x 3456 to 1600 x 1200
The form is set for a timer event once every 3/4 second
Resize of the fly slowed that down to about once per second, and because I saved the images to disk, on subsequent loops, it ran at full tilt.

Very cool!

So, you resized the images as you scrolled through them?  Interesting.  I look forward to reading that article.

@aikimark
The new article is up here  It works really well.  I've already put the underlying idea into production.  On jobs that haven't been printed yet, the images attached are rolling in a 3/4 second per image loop.  I should be able to hear the last excuses about how a poor or wrong image wound up on a report.  There can't be many excuses when they all roll in front of you!

I'll have to see just how fast the images can be rolled.  Combined with the image capture code, I could get Access to create something pretty close to a time-lapse video.

Nick67

thanks for the article and the heads-up that you've posted it.

Was WIA available in any OS prior to Vista?

You could download the WIA SDK from MS for XP, but like all things XP, that's getting tough to do.
This link is still live and looks less sketchy than most
http://vbnet.mvps.org/files/updates/wiaautsdk.zip .

I think, ultimately in the end, you could find the required files on a Win 7 box and do a copy and regsvr32 of the files and get it to work.  I have the logon vbs script that got 'er done for my XP machines, so I can tell you what the files and paths required will be, if you want to have a go at it.

I took the sample from the article, and got it to resize some images down to 96 DPI and roll them at 10 milliseconds -- and it works!!!

Thanks, Nick.  I only asked that question because it was possible that WIA might have been available for the client's Win98 systems when I first worked on that feature.  It is a moot question at this point.  The client closed the clinic last year.  My last job was to copy the files and application to the doctor's home PC.  I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to re-add that feature.

fyi ... Breaking News :::

Los Angeles County moving to O365

http://www.wpcentral.com/los-angeles-county-moving-over-100000-employees-office-365