Clint Covington: Software design, Microsoft Office Access

This is a fun time to work at Microsoft and particularly Office. One of the biggest benefits of working in Office is the opportunity to interact with some of the most experienced and proficient software talent in the world. Internal at Microsoft, the...

I recently stumbled across some interesting work done by our Office Online team. They allow YOU to submit non-code Word, Excel, and PowerPoint templates to Office Online. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/FX100595491033.aspx?pid=CL100632981033...

Alan Cossey recently sent me a overview of how Cool As Ice is using Office Live and Access to track process information. He has found a couple bugs we will fix in SP 1 but overall it is working nicely for them. I thought some of you might appreciate seeing...

This probably isn't interesting to many of you but here is a list of all new runcommands in Access 2007. AddFromOutlook AnchorBottomLeft AnchorBottomRight AnchorBottomStretchAcross AnchorStretchAcross AnchorStretchDown AnchorStretchDownAcross AnchorStretchDownRight...

I recently came across in an internal newsgroup a couple great sites that provide lots of code samples for expressions and runcommands. You might find this useful. Terry Wickenden's web site has lots of examples of RunCommands: http://www.accessruncommand...

I came across a couple of good articles about Toyota improving its designs and innovation process. Business Week, for example, recently published " Fighting to Stay Humble ". "To be satisfied with becoming the top runner, and to become arrogant...

The user assistance team has put together a new blog that will highlight articles. Anyone interested in learning more about Access 2007 should find this useful. To subscribe to the Access feeds, see the article Get our RSS Feeds for Microsoft Office...

This is the final post of a three part series on Access Tips and Tricks provided by members of the Access team. This article focuses on non-obvious things new to the forms and report designers. The other articles in this series covered useful keyboard...

I have a confession to make… I started hacking around in computers with Windows 3.1—never learned how to really use the command line. I know—I have fallen from grace for many of you developers. The mouse has been my friend. I’m trying to change and use...

Today’s guest writer is Access Program Manager Ric Lewis. Ric spent the last couple years with the Indigo team and just took an Access PM job. He is looking for some customer feedback on interesting web services scenarios. To start the conversation—he...

I have been working on a three part series of non-obvious tips and tricks for using Access 2007. The other series will be on designing forms and reports and my favorite keyboard shortcuts. I put together a rough draft of this series and sent it around...

It’s not uncommon in the halls of Microsoft for a passionate Program Manager and brilliant Developer engage in verbal combat over design ideas. Anyone that has worked with talented people on a tough design problem knows that innovative design is hard...

Zac Woodall from the Access PM team pulled together a great list of books coming out on Access 2007. The last book he mentions is his own on templates. It is fun to see the authoring community really get behind this release. I'm sure we will see quite...

Access 2007 and Macros One feature that might be surprising to many experienced developers is the re-invigoration of macros in Access 2007. We have done a bunch of work in this area that we think benefits end users and developers in some scenarios. If...

These quotes are nice to see. I'm also hearing from online communities an dramatic increase in posts on the new version. Microsoft Office 2007 sales twice that of previous version Microsoft Corp.'s new Office 2007 software produced almost twice...

Here are a couple developer focused articles on Excel Services that were published today. Extending the Excel Services Programmability Framework Summary: Optimize version 1 of the Excel Services programmability framework to extend Microsoft Office...

A couple months ago Business Week published an article about a talk "The Craft of Design" given by Jonathan Ive at the Radical Draft conference. http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0701300508jan31,0,4213554.story I found this paragraph...

Those of you that have started using Access 2007 know that you can get rid of the annoying security dialogs and message bar via trusted locations. A new article was just published that tells you how to configure trusted locations and trusted publishers...

The UA team continues to crank our new content. The latest round is about creating reports. Maybe I should point them to my post on better looking reports … J Guide to designing reports Distribute a report electronically Change the appearance...

I'm a frequent reader of the Good Experience blog. These guys do a great job making me think about focusing on the simple things that customers really appreciate. A good experience is so much more than flashy UI--it is about knowing how your customer...

This is a good interview with Chris Capossela, VP for Office Marketing. http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/31/HNofficetrainingfears_1.html This quote does reflect what we have seen in the Access world. Although, you can argue that the Access...

As part of my new role, I'm learning more about Excel Services and the ability to render spreadsheets on the server. Excel Services is available through the Microsoft Office SharePoint Services SKU. Here are links and a screenshot. Conditional Formatting...

The following eight topics are now live on Office Online: 1. Combine the results of several select queries by using a union query 2. Compare two tables and find only matching data 3. Compare two tables and find records without matches 4...

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...

It is a bit off topic for Access developers but I found this article a great read. I especially liked the discussion about long tail apps and plan to blog more on the topic in the future. Summary: This provides an overview of the software-as-a-service...