Microsoft Access Team Blog : Download

Access Developer Extensions 2007 Updates

Ryan McMinn — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:08:22 GMT

Access Developer Extensions 2007 has been updated and is now live on Microsoft.com. Here is a link - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d96a8358-ece4-4bee-a844-f81856dceb67

Highlights of the updates:

Package Solution Wizard
A wizard that creates a Windows Installer Package (MSI) to install your database and any supporting files and optionally includes the Access 2007 Runtime, or prompts the user to download the Access 2007 Runtime.
- Updated for packaging databases with international character file names. Some surrogate Unicode characters are not supported due to MSI technology limitations
- Bug fix: Repairing an package install to a custom location will correctly install to the original user-specified location.
Source Code Control
Integration with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe or other source code control systems to allow check-in/check-out of queries, forms, reports, macros, modules, and data. You can also see the differences that have been made to your checked out objects.
- This is the first release of the ADE that ships the source code control components in additional languages beyond English, Japanese, French and German.
Save As Template
Enables you to create database templates (ACCDTs) that can be featured in the Access 2007 Getting Started screen.
ADE 2007 now available in additional Languages
Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian and German.

Microsoft Access Downloads in Silverlight

Zac Woodall — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:45:40 GMT

I ran across this new Silverlight version of the Microsoft download center this morning. If you haven't seen Silverlight yet, it is pretty cool stuff. It is Microsoft's engine for doing rich graphics composition in the web. Here are all the downloads Microsoft has in the download center which are Access related.

Goldsoft tools for Access Developers

Zac Woodall — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:27:39 GMT

Ken Hockley has recently released his Goldsoft suite. These tools aim to increase Access developer productivity by helping to reduce the amount of time spent building necessary application plumbing so that developers can focus their effort on producing business logic. More info is available at Ken's Goldsoft website. Thanks Ken for the pointer!

Access 2003 SP3 hotfix rollup now available

Clint Covington — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:35:00 GMT

You can find details here...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945674

[Zac] For those of you who are wondering, this is the update I've told several folks would be coming. Everyone who is running Access 2003 SP3 will probably want to apply this patch. It includes fixes for the known problems SP2 users had when upgrading to SP3. We intend to eventually roll this out through Windows Update, but for now, the only way to get these fixes is to download and apply this patch on top of 2003 SP3.

2007 SP1 is Ready!!

Zac Woodall — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:40:00 GMT

At last, the long wait is over, get yours today! I definitely recommend this upgrade to all 2007 users. The team has done a lot of work to improve performance, security, and stability over the original release, which you can get a hold of by installing the SP.

Once you've got it, please let us know what you think!

Access Ribbon Customizer

Zac Woodall — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 02:05:00 GMT

One of our Access support leads, Claton Hendricks, has put together a tool he calls Access Ribbon Customizer for Access developers who need to build custom ribbons. This tool is slightly reminiscent of (though not exactly the same as) the built-in command bar customization in Access 2003. It has a visual picker which allows you to see what commands are available and use them to build a ribbon on the fly, cool stuff.

Thank you Claton for your contribution to the community!

BTW: this is not to be confused with Patrick Schmid's Ribbon Customizer which we've previously blogged about, which is also a very cool tool.

UPDATE: By the way, Claton's tool is still in testing. He's actively working on improving the quality and taking other feedback. Please feel free to contact him through his page to send yours. Also, Tony D'Ambra has a tool called the Custom RibbonX Reviewer for Access 2007 which is currently at the beta 2 stage. Thank you Tony for the pointer! It is awesome to see so many members of the community stepping in here to try and address the need for a graphical ribbon building tool!

If anyone else has Ribbon related tools that they would like to send a pointer to, please respond in the comments for this post. I'm going to be putting together a page for Access developer tools and other resources like this, and I'll be sure you get listed.

PDF & XPS Now supported in Access Runtime!

Zac Woodall — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 01:15:00 GMT

Great news, you can now redistribute and use the PDF and XPS addin with your Runtime solution. Our download page has been updated to reflect this fact. Best of all, you don't need a new copy of the runtime to take advantage of this. The Runtime's code has not been changed. Your existing runtime solutions can now officially be distributed with the PDF and XPS addin by chaining the .msi for PDF and XPS into your install process for your app (after the Runtime).

Access Database Engine Redistributable

Zac Woodall — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 04:01:00 GMT

I was looking for this in search results today and realized that it isn't showing up in the rankings (or maybe it does, but the name isn't very intuitive). The new Access 2007 database engine (which reads and writes .accdb files) is available in redistributable format for those who need to code against the file directly, bypassing Access/VBA.

Access Runtime Re-released

Erik Rucker — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:31:00 GMT

We've finally gotten the runtime re-released and its available on the web at the location below. We've nailed the issues down and it will stay available at this point. My appologies I didn't get this posted over the weekend - I was away without net access for the weekend. Clint's blog got the word out earlier, and that's another good place to look for Access information.

Here is the link for the 2007 Access Runtime:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D9AE78D9-9DC6-4B38-9FA6-2C745A175AED&displaylang=en

There is one known issue where reports don't work in ADP's. We're working on a patch for that issue and will make that available as quickly as we can.

Thanks,

Erik

Automated front-end management and publishing

Erik Rucker — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:58:00 GMT

One of the Access MVPs from Canada has a great tool for helping to manage and publish Front End database apps. For those of you who are familiar with the process of front-ending, this is a real time saver, and he makes it available for free (thanks Tony!).

You can pick up Auto FE Updater from here: http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/autofe.htm

Tony also has a quick explanation for why front-ending is a good thing: http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/autofe/why.htm

Ribbon Customizer

Erik Rucker — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:18:00 GMT

For those of you who have been struggling a little with Ribbon customization in Access 2007 and miss the old world of CommandBars where you could design the command experience directly through the UI, Patrick Schmid has a cool add-in that allows you to make graphical design changes to your Ribbons from right within Office. It works with all Office apps that have the Ribbon.

His tool is free to try, and he's also currently got a beta program going. You can pick up the trial here: http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/download.php, and join the Beta here: http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/betaprogram.php.

Access 2007 Runtime and Developer Extension will be Free

Erik Rucker — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 13:01:00 GMT

Sorry for the lack of posts for the last while - we've been buried getting the next version of Access rolling. Clint Covington posted this on his blog the other day, but it belongs here as well, so here's the same information. I'll have a short series of posts in the next few days about details and availability for some cool new Access resources. I'll be able to resume the descriptions of Access 2007 in a few weeks, and can talk in (very) general terms about the future and how we build Access. Clint's blog is also very useful, and is available at http://blogs.msdn.com/clintcovington/default.aspx.

________________________________

This morning we are announcing that the developer extensions and runtime will be available for FREE! In the past, Access developers had to purchase the Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office System in order to build and deploy runtime solutions. The product was costly at nearly $800 for the full version and $550 for the upgrade. This really is great news for Access developers.

We are still working on the finishing touches--I don't have a definite release date but rest assured the team is working hard to finish the work.

Here are a couple screen shots and the article. Enjoy!

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb229700.aspx

Introducing the Access 2007 Developer Extensions and Runtime

Shortly after the release to the general public of Microsoft Office Access 2007, Microsoft will make available the Access 2007 Developer Extensions and the Access 2007 Runtime. For the first time, both programs will be available as FREE downloads.

Access 2007 Developer Extensions

Package Solution
This is a wizard that will create a Windows Installer Package (MSI) to install your database, any supporting files, and optionally include the Access 2007 Runtime or prompt the user to download the Access 2007 Runtime.
Save As Template
This allows creating database templates (ACCDTs) that can be featured in the Access 2007 Getting Started screen.
Source Code Control
Integration with Microsoft Visual Source Safe or other source code control systems to allow check-in/check-out of queries, forms, reports, macros, modules, and data. You can also see the differences that have been made to your checked out objects.

The Access 2007 Developer Extensions will not include the Property Scanner and the Customer Startup Wizard that were included in previous versions.

Microsoft Office Access 2007 Runtime

Access 2007 provides a rich platform for developing database management solutions with easy to use customization tools. If no end user customization is required (including report modifications), you may choose to distribute those Access 2007 solutions so that they run without requiring a full installation of Access 2007. You must package and distribute your application with the Access 2007 Runtime. The Access 2007 Runtime is similar to previous runtimes in that all design-related UI is either removed or disabled. However, there is one major change: we will be offering the Access 2007 Runtime as a free download, just like we have done for the Snapshot Viewer in the past. You will not need to buy any special SKU in order to redistribute the Access 2007 Runtime. You can freely redistribute it or just point people to the download on Microsoft.com.

Download Locations

Links to the download locations will be posted on Office Online and the Access Developer Portal on MSDN, when available.

A Tool for Building Custom AutoFormats

Erik Rucker — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:45:00 GMT

In the last post, I discussed the new AutoFormats in Access 2007. In this post, I'll describe more about how they work and provide a tool that allows you to create your own formats and customize the ribbon gallery of formats.

AutoFormat Storage

Access 2007 stores AutoFormat information in two different locations, depending on whether those formats have been customized or not. Un-customized formats are stored in tables in an Access 2007 format database that is installed with Office and is shared across all users who have no customized AutoFormats. The file is located at:

%PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Office\Office12\ACCWIZ\ACWZUSR12.accdu

If a user has used the AutoFormat Wizard to add, edit, or delete an AutoFormat, then Access will create a copy of the AutoFormat file for that user. From that point on, all AutoFormat data for that user is stored in their personal database, which is at:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Access\ACWZUSR12.accdu

This is a similar scheme to the way AutoFormat information was stored in Access 2003, but the table schema has changed for Access 2007 formats, so it is not possible to reuse a version of the 2003 database to retain existing AutoFormat settings.

AutoFormat Functionality

The AutoFormat engine works by applying a single format per control type per section. This means, for example, that all the textboxes that appear in the details section of a report will get the same background color, font face, etc. as one another, but that these settings may all be different than the textboxes in the Header or another section. The AutoFormat database simply lists all of the property settings for each of the control types for each of the sections. There are four key tables in the database for these settings, along with other tables for things like supporting functionality, localization, and support for other features. They four key tables for formatting are:

tblStyles - this is a top-level style listing, normalized to style level data like the name of the style and the picture to display. Note that pictures are stored in the Access internal "Picture Data" format which can be set and retrieved using the PictureData property on images or form and report objects.

o tblSectionStyles – Each style has a list of section styles, being the appearance for each section (page header, detail, form footer, etc…). Formats included here are section background color and alternating background color.

§ tblControlStyles – For each section, there is a list of control styles, with 0 or 1 entries for each control type. Control styles have the bulk of the interesting formatting to do with text, like Bold, Italics, Underline, as well as shape appearance, like Border Color, Back Style, Special Effect, etc…

§ tblLayoutStyles – Formatting for layouts is also specified on a per-section basis. There can be 0 or 1 format entries per section for both Stacked and Tabular layouts. Layout formatting is mostly to do with gridlines. For example, all stacked layouts in the detail section can have a ‘Both’ grid style, while all Tabular Layouts have the ‘Vertical’ style.

AutoFormat Editing Tool

The format of these tables inside the database was never meant to be human readable, and can be pretty terse to browse. To make life easier for our own internal editing, we assembled a little tool (an Access database, of course) for viewing, adding, and editing AutoFormats for a given instance of the Acwzusr12.accdu file. If you would like to play around with AutoFormats a little bit, this tool will make that easier. Keep in mind that this is, something we just threw together to work with the rather complex AutoFormat data more easily. The code is pretty rough for a sample, without extensive comments or robust error handling, but it works well for reading and editing AutoFormat data, and what’s more, the tool contains updated AutoFormat data with a number of bug fixes we’ve made since Beta 2.

The tool is available here and is a 2m zip file, so will take a little while to download. This tool will also be part of the Access 2007 Developer Toolkit and will be both polished and contain the final AutoFormat settings at that point. The file simply contains an Access database, which you can save to your machine and open. You'll need to either save the file to a trusted location on your machine or manually enable VBA for the file to work.

Opening the tool brings up the following dialog:

(Click image to enlarge)

Clicking the first link "Step 1: Add / Edit AutoFormats" brings up a large dialog with a list of all of the formats and each of the settings for each of those formats:

(Click image to enlarge)

This is just a standard Access form, so you can filter or sort it as necessary. There is a separate record for the both the Form and Report settings for each format, and then each of the settings for each control and section is laid out below. The AutoFormat property called "Gallery Index" at the top determines where this format goes in the AutoFormat Gallery shown in the last post. This doesn't update the picture in the ribbon (to do that you need to update the ribbon XML file, which we'll cover later) but this is an easy way to get your format on the ribbon.

After you have updated the styles as you like, including adding or deleting any additional styles, you'll need to regenerate the AutoFormat tables. The first setup is to click the compile button, which runs a series of queries and repopulates all of the AutoFormat tables:

You can optionally then preview the styles, with some built-in UI. This is less of a visual preview and a set of reports to allow you to verify all the settings:

(Click image to enlarge)

There is a report that verifies that there are no missing styles, which you can access by clicking the Verify button:

At this point, the AutoFormat database has been rebuilt, and you simply need to publish it to the correct location on your machine. You can do this from the initial dialog. First you click the Browse hyperlink to set the file's location (this should be defaulted for you, and all you have to do is click OK). Then click Publish and you're done.

(Click image to enlarge)

Next Time

The next big post will be about using the new Data Collection feature to add or update data through emailed forms. Those forms can either be plain HTML that work on practically any email client or InfoPath forms that provide a great user experience for Office 2007 users.