Microsoft Office Access 2007 Inside Out

John L. Viescas

Jeff Conrad

Microsoft

PUBLISHED BY
Microsoft Press
A Division of Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, Washington 98052-6399

© 2007 by John L. Viescas and Jeff Conrad

ISBN 9780735623255

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006940676

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Body Part No. X13-24152

Dedication

For Suzanne, as always…

–John Viescas

For the love of my life, Cheryl Without your love, support, and patience,
I would not have been able to complete this project.
Thank you for always believing in me.
And for Amy, Aaron, and Arica. Thank you
for understanding why Daddy could not play
very much for a long time.
And thank you John for taking a chance
and giving an untested, slightly crazy, Access Junkie
the opportunity of a lifetime.

–Jeff Conrad

About the Authors

John Viescas has been working with database systems for most of his career. He began by designing and building a database application for a magazine and paperback book distributing company in Illinois in 1968. He went on to build large database application systems for El Paso Natural Gas Company in his hometown in the early 1970s. From there, he went to Applied Data Research in Dallas, where he managed the development of database and data dictionary systems for mainframe computers.

Before forming his own company in 1993, he helped market and support NonStop SQL for Tandem Computers in California. Somewhere along the way (would you believe 1991?), he got involved in the early testing of a new Microsoft product that was codenamed “Cirrus.” The first edition of Running Microsoft Access was published in 1992. Since then, he has written four more editions of Running, co-authored the best-selling SQL Queries for Mere Mortals, wrote Building Microsoft Access Applications, and is pleased to be writing about Access from the “Inside Out” for this book. If you hang out on the Web, you can find him answering questions about Access in the newsgroups. John has been named a Microsoft MVP every year since 1993 for his continuing help to the Access users’ community. You can reach John via his Web site at www.viescas.com.

Jeff Conrad started working with Access when he saw a need at his full-time position for a database solution. He bought a book on Access (should have been one of John’s books) and began teaching himself how to use the program to solve his business’s needs. He immediately became hooked on the power and ease of working with Access long after John had written several books on the program.

Jeff found a home in the Microsoft Access newsgroups, asking questions as he was learning the ins-and-outs of Access and database development. He now enjoys giving back to a community that helped him when he was first learning how to use Access. He has been an active participant for many years in the Access newsgroups where he is best known as the Access Junkie.

Jeff also owns his own company, Conrad Systems Development, creating custom database and spreadsheet applications for the food service industry. Jeff maintains a Web site with a wealth of information and resource links for those needing guidance with Access (www.AccessJunkie.com). He was awarded Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional award from 2005 to 2007 for his continual involvement with the online Access community. Because Jeff knows Access “Inside Out,” he recently joined Microsoft as a Software Design Engineer in Test working with Access and Excel technologies.

Acknowledgments

The folks on the Microsoft Office Access development team provided invaluable technical support as we worked with the beta software and tried to figure out some of the challenging technical details in Microsoft Office Access 2007. Special thanks to Clint Covington, Tim Getsch, Zac Woodall, Suraj Poozhiyil, Neil Black, Viki Selca, and Rob Cooper. You folks make an author’s job so much easier. But any errors or omissions in this book are ultimately ours.

A book this large and complex requires a top-notch team to get what we put into Microsoft Office Word documents onto the printed pages you are now holding. We had some of the best in the business at both Microsoft Press and Publishing.com to get the job done. Many thanks to Sandra Haynes and Melissa von Tschudi-Sutton at Microsoft Press. Special thanks to Curt Philips, Rozanne Murphy Whalen, Andrea Fox, Kim Wimpsett, and Publishing.com. We couldn’t have done it without you!

And last, but certainly not least, we thank our wives and soul mates. They not only patiently stood by us as we cranked through nearly 3,000 pages of manuscript but also helped behind the scenes reviewing and editing what we did.

John Viescas
Paris, France

Jeff Conrad
Bend, Oregon

February 2007

Your All-in-One Resource

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