Summary

There is quite a lot of important code in this chapter, building on some of the techniques you've learned earlier in the book. In previous chapters we've looked at classes and building your own objects, but this chapter focuses on using objects that have been built by other people - in this case Microsoft. We know that using classes is a great way to promote code reuse and provide ready made functionality to other programmers, and using Automation just takes this one step further.

In this chapter we've looked at the following topics:

• What Automation is and how it works.

• How you can use the functionality of existing applications.

• Using Outlook to send e-mail messages and make appointments.

• Using Word as a basic report writer.

• Combining Excel Charts with Access to provide graphs on forms.

The important thing about using automation is the Object Model. Once you have a basic understanding of the object model of the application you are using, then almost anything is possible.

Now it's time to turn our sights back towards Access, and see how it handles multiple users, and the security of those users.