About the Author

Rick Dobson, Ph.D., is an author, speaker, trainer, and developer. His areas of expertise include Microsoft Access and Microsoft Office, World Wide Web development, and database design and planning. His consulting practice, CAB, Inc., has been in full-time operation since 1991; he operated the practice on a part-time basis for six years before that. His wife, Virginia, participates in the practice by offering professional accounting and tax services. She also writes for such publications as Microsoft Office and Visual Basic for Applications Developer and PC Novice.

Rick used Access from its initial release, and he became active as an Access developer with the beta release of Access 2. Since then, he has lectured on Access development in Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and throughout the United States. Shortly after the release of Access 2, Rick authored his own five-day Access training course. Later, he became a Microsoft Certified Professional and Trainer and started offering the Microsoft courses to clients.

Rick's articles on Access, Web development, and database topics appear in a wide variety of publications, including BYTE, ACCESS-OFFICE-VB ADVISOR (formerly Access/Visual Basic Advisor), Visual Basic Developer, Microsoft Interactive Developer, Visual Basic Programmer's Journal, Microsoft Office Developer's Journal, WEB Techniques, and Microsoft Office and Visual Basic for Applications Developer. Early in his computer career, Rick wrote books for Que about Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Symphony.

Rick has built solutions for the utility, home care nursing, paper manufacturing, and engineering construction industries. Rick has based this book on his consulting experiences as well as on the shared experiences of his trainees and those who write to him with feedback on his articles.

Rick encourages you to share your Access development experiences with him. He particularly welcomes praise of the book, but constructive feedback is OK too. Rick has created a Web site for extra information about Microsoft Access and book updates at http://www.programmingaccess.com. His training and consulting business, CAB Inc., also has information that may be of interest to Access programmers at http://www.cabinc.win.net. You can e-mail Rick at [e-mail].