M. Fahrizal Rahman Blog

In many cases, it is desirable or necessary
to export data from your MS Access Database to a MS Excel Spreadsheet
format. An example would be using MS Word’s Mail Merge Wizard. MS Word
cannot take data directly from an Access database, however it can import
data from an Excel Spreadsheet.

To get the appropriate data, the data
you want on the Excel spreadsheet, from a table in Access, the first
step is to create a query. A query is nothing more than a command given
to the database requesting the information you are asking for. For the
purpose of this article, we will be using a database that stores information
on personal contacts. We will create an Excel spreadsheet that could
be used for creating address labels using MS Word’s Mail Merge Wizard.

In this database, the table "contacts"
is where we are going to query our data. The following picture shows
the Datasheet View of the table Contacts.

To create a query, open the Database Window,
shown below. Click on the queries button. This will show all the queries
in the database and two other Create Query selections in the window.
Along the top tool bar there are also three other choices; Open, Design
and New. Click the New button.

You will now be asked a series of questions.
The first box to appear will give you five choices. Highlight the top
choice, Design View and click OK. Two boxes will now open. The first
one is the query; the second one is asking which table(s) you wish to
use in the query. Where it is possible to use more than one table in
a query, for this example we will only select the Contacts table. Highlight
Contacts and click the Add button, then click the Close button. This
will leave the query window open with a small window representing the
table in the upper portion of the query window.

In the small window that represents the
table Contacts, you will see that each column of data is represented.
The lower half of the query window represents the data that the query
will "show". Double click on each of the data points that
you will ultimately export to your Excel spreadsheet and to your Mail
Merge Wizard. Your query should now look like this:

To test the query, press the "!"
button on the tool bar. The data from the table will be shown to you
in datasheet view. If the data is correct, this is almost what your
spreadsheet will look like. Save the query as "qry_addbook".

The next step is to build a macro. On
your database window, select Macros. Click the New button on the tool
bar. This will open the new macro in Design View. Click on the first
Action Item drop down box. Select OutputTo. The arguments will appear
in the bottom half of the form. Select the following Action Arguments:

Object Type: Query
Object Name: qry_addbook
Output Format: Microsoft Excel (*.xls)
Output File: Leave Blank
Auto Start: Yes
Template File: Leave Blank
Encoding: Leave Blank

When this macro is run, Access will create
an Excel file based on the query in the argument. By leaving the Output
File argument blank, Access will prompt the user to name the new Excel
file. By selecting Auto Start to Yes, Access will open Excel and the
new spreadsheet. Save your macro as "mcro_addbook". Test your
macro by clicking the "!" button on the tool bar. You should
be prompted to name the new file, and Excel should open with the new
file opened.

For ease of use, it is desirable to create
an easy way to run this new macro. A button on a database’s Main Form
or Switchboard is a common way to accomplish this. Close the macro window
and open the Main Form or Switchboard of the database.

When the form is open, click on the Design
View button. The Design View button is the furthest left button on the
toolbar shown above. This will enable you to make changes to the current
form.

This changes the look of the form a little.
It is now editable. An additional toolbar should have also appeared.
On this new toolbar, find the Command Button button. It looks like a
command button. Select the Command Button by clicking on it, and then
click your form in the approximate location you would like the button
to be placed. You will be able to adjust its exact location later. When
you clicked on your form a new window, the Command Button Wizard, should
open. This wizard will allow you to easily set up your new command button.

Select Miscellaneous and Run Macro, click
Next. Select the macro we created, "mcro_addbook", and click
Next. Choose the radio button Text, and insert the text you would like
the button to read, i.e. "Address Book to Excel". After clicking
Next, you can change the command button name, but it is not necessary.
Click Finish.

Move the new command button by clicking
and dragging it. Then click the Form button on the toolbar. It is in
the same place the Design View button was. Your new button should be
active on your form. Save your work and click the new command button
to test the functionality of your changes.- Lloyd E Duncan

Popularity: 6% [?]

SEO for Yahoo small businesses is not a whole lot different from optimizing regular commercial websites.

SEO is the act of formatting a web page(site) so that a search engine views the page as you want it to. Search Engine Optimization.

So you’re just starting your business. You’ve got your business plan all laid out, your domain purchased, and you’re starting to think about designing your website. Now is the perfect time to start thinking about SEO.

Why should you worry about SEO this early in the game? After all, you don’t even have a website yet; just a domain, and maybe a concept of what you want it to look like. Why not let SEO come later, once you’ve already established yourself on the web and have something for search engines to find?

This line of reasoning confuses SEM (Search Engine Marketing) with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Yes, SEM is all about spreading word of your website through the internet, and for that, you generally have to have a website. (Although pre-launch buzz can be very useful, if you can find a company who can pull it off.) But SEO looks, not at the engines, but at your site. It asks “What can we do to optimize this site so that search engines will find it easily, crawl it often, and rank it high?” And that process begins with the beginning of the website.

In fact, many SEO companies will tell you that the very beginning-when you’re just starting to think about your website, and haven’t actually begun to code it-is the very best time to begin optimizing it. And they’d be right; it’s always easier to start something properly than it is to come back later and try to fix it.

Because SEO involves META tags and keyword-rich content, it should be incorporated naturally into a website from the ground up. If you have a webmaster, they may be able to perform some optimization themselves; alternately, you may wish to hire an SEO service to work with you or your webmaster to ensure that your site does everything possible for the best page rank from the very beginning.

SEO isn’t less important for new sites; it’s more important. Getting off to the right start requires careful planning and implementation of every SEO technique that can be applied to your newborn website. Obviously some aspects of SEO, such as search engine submittal, will come after you have an actual website to submit. But the fact that you’re just starting out isn’t an argument against SEO; it’s an argument for it.

Popularity: 4% [?]