Using combo boxes to select an entry and update form fields

by Jonathan Halder | May 6, 2025 | Blogging, MS Access, MS Access Forms, MS Access Queries, MS Access VBA Coding

Yesterday I mentioned a technique I use to hide repeated report fields: https://www.accessjumpstart.com/hiding-duplicate-records-using-running-totals-over-a-group/ Today, I will discuss another technique I use to update fields on a form based on columns in a combo box...

Hiding duplicate records using running totals over a group

by Jonathan Halder | May 5, 2025 | Blogging, MS Access, MS Access Reports, MS Access VBA Coding

I was using a quick technique today to hide certain fields on a report detail section that were repeating. There is a very quick solution to this in which you can use the “Hide Duplicates” property in the Format properties of a text box let’s say....

Simple vs Clever

by Jonathan Halder | May 2, 2025 | Blogging, MS Access, MS Access VBA Coding

Sometimes, I can be too clever for myself. My future self that is. Fancy queries that do everything I need can be satisfying to write, but sometimes the tradeoff is complexity in the query that makes it difficult to understand and update as needed. Then if you have...

Using a Null Object pattern in VBA Polymorphic classes

by Jonathan Halder | May 1, 2025 | Blogging, MS Access, MS Access Features, MS Access VBA Coding

If you have an interface class object and you implement several types of the object, what can you do when your object has no handler? That’s where the Null Object pattern comes into play. Here’s an example of how you could implement the Null Object Design...

Quoting big blocks of SQL with MZ-Tools

by Jonathan Halder | Apr 30, 2025 | Blogging, MS Access, MS Access Queries, MS Access VBA Coding

The last few days I’ve been adding lots of VBA code for updating views and tables to put new fields into my SQL Server backend. I’ve been using the MZ-Tools regular expression search and replace tool to do some heavy lifting for quoting paragraphs of SQL...

Simple Code Kata – Reverse a string

by Jonathan Halder | Apr 29, 2025 | Blogging, MS Access, MS Access VBA Coding, TDD

Here is another simple code kata produced for me by CoPilot. Thanks CoPilot! Task: We need a function that can reverse a given string. Examples (input → output): “hello” → “olleh” “VBA” → “ABV”...