[AccessD] Tech books ...

If the person is an Access developer...and they want to interact with Excel,
I can get them going with 2 statements.

1.  Data can be read/written to/from excel by using ADO (with the Jet OLEDB
driver).
2.  To use automation, open Excel, record a macro to get yourself close to
what you are trying to do, then copy the code the macro creates into a
module.  You'll need to create an Excel.Application object, and preface the
lines of codes with that object.

All done.  <grin>

Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: Hale, Jim [mailto:jim.hale at fleetpride.com]
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 3:04 PM
To: 'accessd at databaseadvisors.com'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Tech books ...


<As there are millions of Excel and Access power users through developers -
and sometimes they
     will be doing other apps - eg. Excel to Access >

Hmm.....I've spent the last year developing an Access/Excel
Planning/financial reporting system currently being used by a 150 store, 400
million sales company. This includes creating  Excel planning templates
(with store history)from within Access. After the templates are completed
the  finished plan data is uploaded back into Access. The system also
includes downloading historical/plan/forecast data from linked AS400 tables
into Excel spreadsheets for board reports, downloading into pivot tables,
consolidations, etc. 

It seems to me the Access books don't discuss in depth techniques for
interacting with Excel. The Excel books are no better. They all have the
obligatory "Access/Excel can be used with other office products" chapter and
a little obligatory code. My idea is to write a book discussing techniques
for using Excel with Access. I would use my system as the example and
include the whole thing on the book's disk. The problem, as Tom points out,
is that you can't very well teach all of Access and Excel and cover the
system's code techniques in a single book. Do any of you think there would
be any interest in a book like this or is it overkill? Would anyone be
interested in a Access based planning and financial reporting system? Susan,
any thoughts?
Jim Hale

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Adams [mailto:tomadatn at bellsouth.net]
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 8:25 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] Tech books ...


To the whizzes that write books in this list.

A recent post that said they learned better from examples than from reading
books brought up a point I've been meaning to make.  I
know the publishers push you to include all Access user levels in your books
so more will sell.  However that means that 80% of the
book is useless for moderate to advanced readers.

There are two points I'd like to point out (neither of which has a chance of
making it).
1.  Have a few overly documented examples if you will - but include a bunch
of heavy duty
     code for examples for the advanced programmers - with little or no
comments.  The documented
     examples in books are usually too simple to be very useful.  Real code
will teach most
     developers without the comments.

2.  As there are millions of Excel and Access power users through developers
- and sometimes they
     will be doing other apps - eg. Excel to Access, Excel to VB, Access to
VB and/or VB to Access,
     Access to Sql Server and Sql Server to Jet - consider writing a From X
to Y Dictionary.  Eg.
     From Access to VB, From Jet to Sql Server, etc.

     I've moved into VB for the last 6 months and would have paid almost
anything for an Access to Vb
     book.  Eg. Combo Box.  What a pain in VB.  Can't tell you how long this
took me to figure out.
     Makes me want to find one of the Access guys at Microsoft and give them
my first born child (I
     know, I know - she's a teenager and that's a punishment worse than
death to inflict on anyone but
     the thought is grateful.)

     I find that I know exactly what I want to do in Access but the
differences are often difficult to figure
     out.





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