Appendix A - On-line User Communities | Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro

Appendix A - On-line User Communities

When you re really stuck, the best place to get help is usually an on-line user group of some sort.

The two of us first met on-line. Before we actually saw each other face-to-face, we d been corresponding in CompuServe s FoxForum for quite a while. We met the Technical Editor of this book and the Publisher the same way. In fact, most of our best opportunities in the FoxPro community came from relationships that began on-line. So we re big believers that the place you go to get help with your programming problems is on-line.

The thing that distinguishes one resource from another is the quality of the help you get. For the most part, all the help that s available comes from volunteers who enjoy answering questions as a way of honing their own skills or to thank the people who helped them along the way. Many of the people (including Tamar) who answer questions in the places we list are Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, recipients of an annual award given to those who spend inordinate amounts of time helping others on-line.

The tricky part about listing on-line resources is that the particulars can change. Some places stay put for a long time, but others seem to move around regularly. Even those that we d consider permanent sometimes undergo revision. While we were writing this book, CompuServe made major changes in its forum structure. So, while this list is accurate as of the date we re writing it (and this is the last part of the book we re writing), we re sadly aware that the minute we commit it to paper, something may change. So search around the links we list, or use search engines to find similarly named sites if the exact locations we supply are no longer valid.

We re dividing this list into two parts, FoxPro resources and Office resources. As FoxPro developers, we re far more familiar with the former, but we ve done our best to root out the latter for you, as well. Also, before we get started listing user communities, we should remind you that Microsoft offers considerable on-line resources at its MSDN web site, msdn.microsoft.com. That site provides access to the Microsoft Knowledge Base, tons of documentation and technical articles, and lots of other support documents. It s often a good place to start your search for help.