Recent News from FMS

Our September newsletter has been published with news on our new update for Total Access Analyzer 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007. We've added links to our updated web pages on Microsoft Access Shortcut Keys for Data Entry/Navigation and Inheriting Legacy Microsoft Access Databases.

FMS has started sponsoring the Portland Oregon Access User Group on Meetup and FMS President Luke Chung will be speaking at two upcoming Microsoft Access conferences!

If you did not receive the newsletter through email, you will find it here: FMS September 2019 Newsletter

August 2019

New updates for Total Access Analyzer are available for Microsoft Access 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007. Total Access Analyzer is the most popular Microsoft Access add-in, that offers comprehensive documentation and analysis of your MS Access databases so you can better understand individual objects, cross-references between objects, procedure and data flow diagrams, VBA module analysis, and much more. Detecting over 430+ ways to fix and improve your databases, Total Access Analyzer improves the quality of your work, teaches you best practices, and increases your productivity.

Enhancements

• Ribbon Documentation
• Data Macro Analysis
• SQL Cross-Reference and Validation of Subform References
• New Errors and Suggestions
• Report, View Explorer and Quick Documentation Enhancements
• About Box has Check for Updates
• Revised User Manual and Help File
• Improved User Interface
• and more...

For more information, visit:

• Total Access Analyzer 2019, Version 17.1
• Total Access Analyzer 2016, Version 16.7
• Total Access Analyzer 2013, Version 15.7
• Total Access Analyzer 2010, Version 14.7
• Total Access Analyzer 2007, Version 12.97

Download the Free Trial to experience it for yourself.

Microsoft recognized FMS President Luke Chung as a Microsoft MVP for the eighth year in a row for his support in the Microsoft Access community!

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award is given to individuals who have exhibited exceptional technical expertise and a talent for sharing knowledge within their technical community.

FMS is sponsoring the Portland Microsoft Access User Group on Meetup! This group is dedicated to Microsoft Access and meet every month to share their experiences and answer questions about Access.

Meetup is an online community that you can join for free and receive notifications from the group. If you are close to Portland, Oregon, we invite you to join them!

Our March newsletter has been published with news on our new papers including a useful Microsoft Access tip on copying a command button on a form without losing its picture, a SQL Server paper on replacing server logins with database users, and addressing SQL Server security holes on Azure.

We have included a link to download all the free Microsoft Access Runtime Distributions and a support page on how to tell if you're using Microsoft Access 2016 or 2019 and much more!

If you did not receive the newsletter through email, you will find it here: FMS March 2019 Newsletter

Microsoft Access forms allow you to add pictures to command buttons. A helpful way to visually identify buttons. Unfortunately, when you want to copy and paste the button, the new button doesn't have the picture.

Our team discovered an easy way to modify the original command button so that you can copy and paste it with its picture! There are also steps on using your own graphic files.

To read the full step by step instructions, visit the Microsoft Access Form Tip: Copy and Paste a Command Button without Losing its Picture.

Redmond, Washington

Thursday March 21, 2019

In conjunction with the Microsoft MVP conference, FMS President Luke Chung is participating with Access Day in Redmond, Washington! It is hosted once again by J Street Technology!

Registration information is available at Access Day 2019.

Microsoft Store in Tysons Corner Center

Wednesday March 20, 2019

7:00PM - 9:00PM

The Washington DC Access User's Group Quarterly Meeting will be held at the Microsoft Store in Tysons Corner Center. We will be sharing information among attendees and answering any questions. If you have a specific question, please bring your Access database with you, so that we can load it and view it.

For more information on the meeting, visit Washington, DC Microsoft Access Meetup.

January 30, 2019

FMS President Luke Chung's new paper discusses how to create Microsoft SQL Server Database Users and Permissions instead of Server Logins!

This information applies to Microsoft SQL Server hosted on your own platform and Microsoft Azure. Assumes you are familiar with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

Visit our page Microsoft SQL Server Database Users and Permissions for more information.

Have any suggestions or comments? Head to our blog post Use Microsoft SQL Server Database Users Rather than Server Logins and leave us your feedback!

January 2019

Microsoft offers runtime versions of Microsoft Access so you can create database applications in MS Access and distribute them to non-Access owners. The runtime version allows your users to use your databases without purchasing their own license of Access/Office.

The Office 365 Access Runtime files are available as a free download in either the 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) versions in all supported languages.

You can download it from here: Microsoft Access Runtime Distribution and Free Downloads.

This is what a government shutdown looks like to contractors. We have a small project with Amtrak to support a Microsoft Access application. They sent us this letter after the budget impasse in Congress.

The suspension isn’t a big deal to us since we don’t have dedicated staff supporting it. It’s awful for contractors with larger commitments and their staff who are unlikely to be compensated for the shutdown.

After posting on Twitter about the letter we received from Amtrak in regard to the Government Shutdown, FMS President Luke Chung was contacted by WUSA9 and the Huffingtonpost.

WUSA9, December 26, 2018

On December 26, 2018, FMS President Luke Chung was quoted by John Henry from WUSA9 on our FMS, Inc. government contract suspension in his #ShutdownStories. It was featured on the 11pm News and WUSA9 website!

To read the article and watch the video, visit #ShutdownStories: Government contractors tackle life without pay during partial shutdown.

Huffingtonpost, December 27, 2018

On December 27, 2018, The Huffingtonpost quoted FMS President Luke Chung:

“Business owners who have [dedicated] staff are making the decision: Do we pay people or not, even though we won’t get paid by the government?” Chung said. “Either you force people to take vacation, or you pay them, to be a good company ― but depending how long it drags on, one may not have a choice.”

For the full article, visit Shutdown Leaves Government Contractors Without Work And Likely No Back Pay.

To read more on the Government Shutdown, visit our blog post, Government Shutdown's impact on the Contractors and Employees and leave us a comment about your experience.

December 19, 2018

FMS President Luke Chung wrote a new paper on eliminating the default database security holes with Microsoft SQL Server on Azure.

Do not allow all Azure resources permission to your Azure SQL Server databases. Set the permissions to OFF to disallow all Azure services to connect to your SQL server:

Step-by-step instructions are provided to allow specific IP Addresses or range of IP Addresses that are permitted to get data from your server and databases.

Visit our page Microsoft Azure Security Holes with SQL Server Databases for more information.

Our December newsletter is now available!

If you did not receive the newsletter through email, you will find it here:

FMS December 2018 Newsletter

December 2018

Total Access Analyzer examines all your database objects to provide extensive documentation, code analysis, object cross-reference, and diagrams with over 390 presentation-quality reports. It detects 300+ types of errors, suggestions, and performance tips, so you can learn and apply Best Practices to fix problems, improve your design, and speed up your Access applications.

Enhancements

• Supports Microsoft Access 2019, 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• Document All Database types supported by Microsoft Access 2019.
• Improved Blueprint Documentation.
• Additional Cross-Reference and Validation including Subform References.
• Improved Memory Management.
• Data Macro Documentation.
• Document Workgroup Security in ACCDBs.
• Better Support of Documentation for Multiple Databases.
• Module Bracket Reports.
• Improved User Interface Shows more Progress Details.
• New Manual and Context Sensitive Help.
• and more...

Existing Total Access Analyzer owners are able to upgrade at a discounted price.

December 2018

New updates for Total Access Analyzer are available for Microsoft Access 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007. Total Access Analyzer is the most popular Microsoft Access add-in, that offers comprehensive documentation and analysis of your MS Access databases so you can better understand individual objects, cross-references between objects, procedure and data flow diagrams, VBA module analysis, and much more. Detecting over 300+ ways to fix and improve your databases, Total Access Analyzer improves the quality of your work, teaches you best practices, and increases your productivity.

Enhancements

• Additional Cross-Reference and validation of tables, queries, fields and controls across your database objects, including references in subforms.
• Improved form and report blueprint documentation to capture large and complicated designs and layouts.
• Improved memory management for documenting large Access databases to minimize the chance of running out of memory.
• Data macro documentation and cross references to related tables.
• Documentation of workgroup security settings for ACCDBs if they wer converted from MDBs with workgroup security.
• Improved user interface to show progress of the documentation.
• Revised user manual and help file.
• and more...

For more information, visit:

• Total Access Analyzer 2016 Build: 16.10.0040
• Total Access Analyzer 2013 Build: 15.60.0040
• Total Access Analyzer 2010 Build: 14.60.0040
• Total Access Analyzer 2007 Build: 12.96.0040

Download the Free Trial to experience it for yourself.

October 26, 2018

FMS, Inc is celebrating its 32nd year! Since we started in 1986, FMS has become the world's leading developer of products for Microsoft Access developers and a top vendor of products for the SQL Server, Visual Studio .NET, and Visual Basic communities.

With tens of thousands of customers in over 100 countries, FMS customers are comprised of a variety of organizations from small to large including 90 of the Fortune 100 and every US federal government department. Our experience and processes for developing commercial off-the-shelf software deployed worldwide is applied throughout all our development efforts.

We at FMS, Inc. want to thank our customers for choosing us and we hope we can continue serving you in the future.

Do you only have the ACCDE or MDE database files but can't find the original ACCDB and MDB files that created them?

We provide a database recovery service to convert ACCDE and MDE databases to ACCDB and MDB files. Also, we rescue data and other objects from a corrupt Access database.

We need to perform an assessment of a few hours to see if a recovery is possible, and if so provide the cost for doing it. This service is only provided if you have ownership of the solution and intellectual property.

For more information, visit Microsoft Access Database Recovery Service.

October 9, 2018

Many Microsoft Access users have recently been confronted with this error when they open their database on Windows 10 machines:

"Microsoft Access has detected that this database is in an inconsistent state, and will attempt to recover the database. During this process, a backup copy of the database will be made and all recovered objects will be placed in a new database. Access will then open the new database. The names of objects that were not successfully recovered will be logged in the 'Recovery Errors' table."

We wrote a blog post on a potential workaround for this error. Please share your experiences!

October 4, 2018

FMS President Luke Chung met with Emanuel Gonzalez-Revilla the Ambassador of the Republic of Panama to the United States.

They had a nice candid discussion about the business climate in Panama, the work he did there before becoming ambassador, his role as US ambassador, relations between the US and Panama, relations between Panama and other countries, especially China, banking Panama and the Panama Papers scandal, raising his two college age sons, and what he may do after his 5 year term expires next year.

For more information on Ambassador Emanuel Gonzalez-Revilla, visit the Embassy of Panama.

September 19, 2018

7:00PM - 9:00PM

Microsoft Store in Tysons Corner Center

Join FMS President Luke Chung on September 19, 2018, at the Washington, DC Access User's Quarterly Group meeting at the Microsoft Store in Tysons Corner Center.

Tammy Lawson will be giving a presentation on Integrating Microsoft Access with PowerBI to create visualizations.

For more information, visit Washington, DC Microsoft Access Meetup.

Microsoft recognized FMS President Luke Chung as a Microsoft MVP for the seventh year in a row for his support in the Microsoft Access community!

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award is given to individuals who have exhibited exceptional technical expertise and a talent for sharing knowledge within their technical community.

Our August newsletter is now available!

If you did not receive the newsletter through email, you will find it here:

FMS August 2018 Newsletter

August 21, 2018

Total Access Emailer is the most popular email automation system for Microsoft Access. A new update was released for the Microsoft Access 2016 version.

Enhancements

• Partially Restored Original SMTP Validation Technique.
• Validation of FROM Address during Email Blasts.
• Adjusted the saving of datasheet column settings on databases before Access 2007.
• Improved Offline activation and uninstall.
• Cosmetic changes to the program and sample databases.

For more information, visit:

• Access 2016 Build: 16.01.0016

Existing Total Access Emailer 2016 owners were notified to download the update.

July 19, 2018

President Lincoln's Cottage, Washington, DC

FMS President Luke Chung was honored to meet David Rubenstein, philanthropist and co-founder of the Carlyle Group during the Washington DC Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization event.

The event was held at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, DC, where Lincoln summered and drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, two copies of which David purchased and donated. David Rubenstein is a fascinating and inspirational leader who has helped many companies around the world, and is dedicated to a legacy of preserving historic documents and sites, and pandas.

Our July newsletter is now available!

If you did not receive the newsletter through email, you will find it here:

FMS July 2018 Newsletter

July 18, 2018

7:00PM - 9:00PM

Microsoft Store in Tysons Corner Center

Join FMS President Luke Chung on July 18, 2018, at the Washington, DC Access 2nd Quarter User's Group meeting at the Microsoft Store in Tysons Corner Center.

Members will share their experiences with Microsoft Access and the solutions to different Microsoft Access questions.

For more information, visit Washington, DC Microsoft Access Meetup.

July 1, 2018

Microsoft has officially recognized FMS President Luke Chung as a Microsoft MVP for the seventh year in a row!

Visit Microsoft's MVP Public Profile Page to learn more about Luke's contributions to the Microsoft Access Community.

Congratulations Luke!

June 19, 2018

Total Access Emailer is the most popular email automation system for Microsoft Access. A new update was released for the Microsoft Access 2016 version.

Enhancements

• SMTP validation uses your email address and eliminates the need to use a TEmail.txt file.
• Changes you make in the datasheets settings such as column settings, sort order, and/or filters are saved where appropriate for the next time the form is opened.
• Preview Text allows you to test your email blasts by sending the emails to your own email address.
• When setting an email blast, the FROM email address is validated for an acceptable email format.
• When the name of an attachment file includes invalid characters (e.g. :*?"<>|), a message indicates that problem rather than saying the file can't be found.
• Procedure TotalAccessEmailer_SendOne had two parameters (strMessageHTML and strHTMLFile) that are optional but were previously required.
• Sample database updated with TLS option and larger fonts.
• Cosmetic changes to increase font size, widen combo boxes, font consistency, and support for higher resolution monitors.
• Manual and help file updated.

For more information, visit:

• Access 2016 Build: 16.01.0014

Existing Total Access Emailer 2016 owners were notified to download the update.

May 18, 2018

Total Access Detective finds differences between Microsoft Access databases and objects. Updates for Total Access Detective are available for Microsoft Access 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007.

Enhancements

• Improved SQL string comparisons for saved queries and properties like RecordSource and RowSource.
• Trailing blank spaces and extra blank lines are removed before comparing them, this avoids flagging SQL string differences that do not affect functionality.
• Query comparison. Under Data Options, if the query option is set to First Field Unique, it was always treating them sequentially and stopped on the first difference. This is fixed and works correctly.
• Table macro comparison supports table names with apostrophe (') in the them.
• Text comparison. If the VBA option is not selected, the results do not show the Procedure tabs.
• Database comparison results: The database name goes across the entire top of the form rather than being truncated.
• All other reported issues.

For more information, visit:

• Access 2016 Build: 16.01.0024
• Access 2013 Build: 15.51.0024
• Access 2010 Build: 14.51.0024
• Access 2007 Build: 12.91.0024

Existing Total Access Detective owners were notified to download the update.

Our May newsletter is now available!

If you did not receive the newsletter through email, you will find it here:

FMS May 2018 Newsletter

May 11, 2018

Remote Desktops connections are failing to connect due to a security patch that was released on May 8, 2018.

An authentication error has occurred.
The function requested is not supported

Remote computer: [computer name]
This could be due to CredSSP encryption oracle remediation.
For more information, see https:/go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=866660

It's also impacting VPN connections.

We wrote a blog post on the issue, symptoms, causes, and workaround. This is a brand new situation. Please share your experiences.

FMS President Luke Chung wrote step by step instructions on how to convert existing databases to an Elastic Pool.

Microsoft provides information on Elastic Pools but does not give you information on how to convert existing databases to those Elastic Pools.

Visit our page Converting Microsoft Azure SQL Server Databases to SQL Elastic Pools to Share Server Resources for more information.

April 28 - 30, 2018, Silver Falls State Park, Oregon

The Portland Access User Group held their annual event at the conference center in the beautiful Silver Falls State Park a few hours south of Portland, Oregon. The weekend event brought together some of the top Microsoft Access developers, enthusiasts, and Access development team members.

FMS President Luke Chung was one of the featured speakers. He made two presentations:

• Data Analytics: Query Tips and VBA Code
• Form and Report Design Tips and Techniques

Our April newsletter is now available!

If you did not receive the newsletter through email, you will find it here:

FMS April 2018 Newsletter

FMS President Luke Chung wrote a new paper on monitoring SQL server usage and setting DTU Limits with Microsoft Azure.

Why does the 60 minutes graph look so different from the 65 minutes graph?

To learn why, visit: Monitoring SQL Server Usage on Microsoft Azure and Setting DTU Limits

April 7-8, 2018, Hotel Strudlhof

FMS was a sponsor for the second Microsoft Access Developer Conference in Vienna, Austria.

Fellow Microsoft Access MVP Karl Donaubauer hosted a sold-out event with 60 attendees from 13 countries. Photos from the 2018 event are available here.

FMS President Luke Chung was a featured speaker for the 2018 conference and gave a new presentation on Incompatibilities Among Microsoft Access Versions

For more information: Access DevCon Vienna

April 11, 2018

The Facebook security breech is actually a violation of Facebook API licensing rules. Facebook provided the data so developers like us could create innovative solutions. They weren't selling the data.

One of the things developers couldn't do was to save the data. That's how the data improperly got to Cambridge Analytica. All of that was shut down shortly when Facebook limited their APIs and prevented our application from getting to the data. It's not entirely Facebook's fault for trying to spur innovation by sharing their data for free. Unfortunately, some developers violated their terms completely.

Here’s a new web page describing our experience in more detail: Facebook Application with Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Geospatial Mapping

For more information, visit our blog post:

What happened when we created a Facebook App for Social Network Analysis

March 20, 2018

FMS President Luke Chung had the pleasure to attend a meeting with Linda McMahon the SBA Administrator. Linda McMahon spoke about the Small Business Administration that she currently leads, how they help businesses around the country, and her journey from a small town in NC to running the WWF, now WWE, in an obviously male dominated industry.

Here's a list of free resources directly from the Microsoft Access team. It includes the new technical community, training videos, help center, blog, and how to sign up to be an Office Insider.

Visit our blog post for more details.

Microsoft Access/Office Resources

Our March newsletter is now available!

If you did not receive the newsletter through email, you will find it here:

FMS March 2018 Newsletter

FMS President Luke Chung gave a presentation on Microsoft Access Form Tips and Techniques to a group of Access enthusiasts at Access Day in Redmond, Washington.

Celebrating Microsoft Access with fellow Access MVPs at the annual Microsoft MVP Summit. Pleased to learn of the new features coming to the Access Desktop in Office 2019, and the positive direction the Access development team is taking.

March 14, 2018, Towson University

2018 Microsoft MVP Tech Tour at Towson University.

FMS President Luke Chung is a speaker and will

• Present Cloud Technology: Office Desktop (Access/Excel) to SQL Server to the Azure Cloud
• Participate on a Career Panel Discussion

Microsoft Access debuted in 1992 and recently celebrated its 25th Anniversary! Over the decades, Microsoft Access evolved with a large number of enhancements, database formats, and discontinued features.

It's hard to remember all the changes. Fortunately, we created a page that shows the different Microsoft Access versions and changes in an easy to understand comparison matrix. See when versions were released, their latest service packs, database formats, linked tables, field types, security features, Windows Operating Systems, and many other features both new and old.

March 8, 2018, Redmond, Washington

Join us for Access Day, the one-day event with a variety of expert speakers and topics.

FMS President Luke Chung is a presenter and will be discussing Microsoft Access Form Tips and Techniques.

For more information and registration, visit: 2018 Access Day

February 2, 2018

We’ve updated our list of Microsoft Access updates and patches to includes Microsoft’s recent releases for MS Access 2016 and 2013.

It also includes information on the three different update channels for Office 365 and how that compares to the perpetual Office/Access license.

Links to the Microsoft KnowledgeBase articles and download files are included.

The Sean Hannity Radio Show, January 22, 2018

Background

On January 22, 2018, Luke Chung was on the radio show with Sean Hannity and Andrew Ziem. The three of them discussed the technology behind the ability to retrieve text messages that were deleted. Luke commented specifically on:

• How text messages are stored on a sender’s/receiver’s device, unlike emails which are stored on a central server.
• The ability to retrieve an email that has been deleted is more likely than trying to retrieve a text.

To listen to the interview and more insight on these issues, visit Luke Chung's blog post:

Sean Hannity Radio Show Interview on Missing FBI Text Messages

January 2, 2018

New versions of Total Access Statistics are available for Microsoft Access 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, and 2003.

Enhancements:

• Adjusted treatment of null values as missing values rather than zero
• Updated digital signature for Runtime MDE (for MDB databases)
• Enlarged the field selection forms

For more information, visit:

• Access 2016 Build: 16.01.0031
• Access 2013 Build: 15.01.0031
• Access 2010 Build: 14.11.0031
• Access 2007 Build: 12.91.0031
• Access 2003 Build: 11.91.0031

Existing Total Access Statistics owners were notified to download the update.

Total Access Emailer is a Microsoft Access program that lets you send personalized emails with attachments from your tables and reports to everyone on your list. The Professional Version includes the Access add-in and a VBA Library so you can launch email blasts from VBA code and events.

We've created a new support page to help troubleshoot common issues when using the VBA interface.

1. Make sure your copy of Total Access Emailer supports your Access version.
2. If you upgrade your database from an MDB to ACCDB format, be sure to also update your Total Access Emailer library reference from our MDE to ACCDE library file.

Microsoft Access is celebrating its 25th year. It's an amazing accomplishment for a software product to be so successful for so many years. We at FMS were there since the beginning.

Read our first hand, historical account of watching Microsoft Access take over the Windows desktop database market, and how we became the world's leading 3rd party developer of Microsoft Access products. Discover how we watched MS Access rise from nothing to the leading Windows desktop database application. This directly caused the implosion of Borland International which previously dominated the desktop database industry. Witnessing this in person was an amazing experience of how quickly technology can change established businesses.

This article was originally published by Microsoft on their website for the 10 Year Anniversary Celebration of Access (October 2002)

The video is from the November 1992 COMDEX conference where a very young Bill Gates personally announced the debut of Microsoft Access. He remains a big fan of Access and was actively involved in its design and development.

Read our new paper on how to easily convert a field's text to Proper Case (or ALL CAPITALS or all lower case). This can be done with a Microsoft Access query without having to write any VBA code.

By using VBA StrConv function in an Update Query, one can convert the value of a field into Proper Case and update a field with it:

For more details, including a sample database, read our new paper: Microsoft Access Query Tip to Convert a Text Field to Proper Case

September 11, 2017, 6:30 PM

Microsoft Headquarters, New York City

FMS President Luke Chung is the featured presenter at the Microsoft Access User Group meeting in New York City.

Watch him share his experiences and demonstrate FMS products for Microsoft Access, SQL Server, Azure cloud computing, and techniques to improve your productivity.

August 11, 2017

Total Access Emailer is the most popular email program for Microsoft Access.

We've created new articles for Total Access Emailer to work with SMTP servers from Microsoft Office365 and Google Gmail:

• SMTP Relay Configuration to Send Emails from Total Access Emailer with Office365
  
• Setting Google Gmail as the SMTP Server for Total Access Emailer
  

July 21, 2017

New versions of Total Access Detective are available for Microsoft Access 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007.

Enhancements:

• 2016 Version: Support for the new update of Access 2016 in May 2017
• 2016, 2013, 2010 Versions: Comparison of Data Macros in ACCDB databases
• Two database comparison, Object Selection screen enhancements highlight objects with different modification dates and filtering
• If you resize datasheet columns while viewing the Total Access Detective results, your column widths are preserved the next time you reopen the form
• Improved user interface with increased font sizes
• Automatic selection of A4 paper size for international users
• More trapping of Access database errors
• New user manual and help file
• and more...

For more information, visit:

• Total Access Detective 2016, Version 16.01 Enhancements
• Total Access Detective 2013, Version 15.5 Enhancements (replaces version 15.0)
• Total Access Detective 2010, Version 14.51 Enhancements
• Total Access Detective 2007, Version 12.91 Enhancements

This is a free upgrade for people on a support contract and owners of the 2016, 2010, and 2007 versions. Existing Total Access Detective 2013 customers can upgrade at a discounted price.

FMS President Luke Chung was a presenter at the Microsoft Access DevCon 2017 in Vienna, Austria in early April.

Before giving two conference presentations, he was sat down and spoke with Philipp Stiefel of codekabinett.com of Germany discussing VBA development.

They talked about:

• VBA Best Practices
• How end-users migrate from Excel to Access, then learn how to code
• Why people are hesitant to purchase third party products and how FMS overcomes that by showcasing the value we offer
• Using tools like Total Access Analyzer to catch errors before shipping and learning best practices
• Using the module code in Total Visual SourceBook to address problems we've already solved so you can focus on the unique issues in your applications
• The value of creating consistent, quality code How to improve code for developers of all backgrounds
• Being in constant "growth" mode to look for ways to become a better developer

April 1-2, 2017, Hotel Strudlhof

FMS friend and Microsoft Access MVP Karl Donaubauer is organizing a Microsoft Access conference in his hometown of Vienna, Austria the weekend of April 1-2, 2017. Please let him know if you are interested in attending. He has organized many Access conferences in Germany. This is the first in English.

FMS President Luke Chung is a featured speaker and will discuss Microsoft Access Strategies and Products. Many of the world's leading Microsoft Access developers will be speaking with Luke. Visit the agenda to learn more.

Arrive a day early for a free guided tour of the beautiful and historic city of Vienna, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

For more information and registration, visit: Access DevCon Vienna

January 9, 2017

Build 16.00.0015 was released and is available for free to all Total Visual Agent 2016 customers. For more information on the update, visit Enhancements in Total Visual Agent 2016, Build 16.00.0015

The Total Visual Agent Version and Updates page was also enhanced to show the history of the product since its debut 20 years ago

The Sean Hannity Radio Show, January 4, 2017

Background

The day after an amazing personal interview of Julian Assange by Sean Hannity aired on his TV show, FMS President Luke Chung was invited to discuss the related technology on his radio show.

Hannity traveled to London to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy where he’s seeking asylum. They discussed an overview of Assange’s role as founder of WikiLeaks, and their obtaining and publishing the emails from the Democratic National Committee the weeks before the US Presidential election. Some people attribute Hillary Clinton’s loss to the revelations in those emails especially from John Podesta, the former White House Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Clinton campaign. They are also accusing the Russians for hacking (stealing) and providing the data to Assange so Donald Trump could win the election.

Radio Show

On January 4, 2017, Luke was on the radio show with Sean Hannity and Brigadier General Eli Ben Meir, former Israeli Military Intelligence chief. The three of them discussed the WikiLeaks disclosures. Luke commented specifically on:

• Cyber attacks and the security breach at OPM disclosed non-classified government employees and by omission who were covert at American Embassies globally.
• Noting Julian Assange’s careful word choices to exclude Russia as source without excluding them as the ultimate source of his sources.
• The need for WikiLeaks’ to keep their sources confidential and how they amplified the data from Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.
• Different approaches to preventing cyber attacks depending on the cause.

“It’s one thing when someone steals your car because they broke into it. It’s another thing when someone steals your car because you left your keys in the ignition.”

To listen to the interview and more insight on these issues, visit Luke Chung's blog post:
Sean Hannity Radio Show Interview on Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Russian Hacking, and Cyber Warfare

December 21, 2016

Total Access Admin lets you monitor users going in and out of your databases in real-time. See who's currently in your database and who recently exited, create a log of connections and disconnects, compact the database after everyone exits, etc. Monitor all the databases across your network from one installation of Total Access Admin.

Total Access Admin 2016 includes many new features.

• Does not require Microsoft Access to be installed on your machine
• Works in environments where either Access 32 or 64-bit versions is installed, including installations from Microsoft Office365
• Up to 150 databases can be monitored at one time (up from 100)
• Setup program supports Windows 8 and 10, and has an option to launch the program after its installed

Read our New Features page for details.

Download the free, fully-functional Trial Version to see how helpful Total Access Admin can be for you. Existing customers can upgrade at a discounted price.

November 30, 2016

A new version of Total Access Statistics is now available for Microsoft Access 2010 (32 and 64-bit versions).

Running as an Access add-in Wizard, Total Access Statistics generates a wide range of numerical analysis beyond the power of queries. All results are in Access tables that you can add to your queries, forms and reports.

The new 14.1 version is an update from version 14.0 which was released in 2010 and includes many new features:

• Compatibility with the latest versions of Windows and runtime library
• The VBA runtime libraries in the Professional Version are upgraded so you can support users running your application in Access 2013 and 2016.
• Additional Percentile Types can be assigned to a field in your table
• Data formatting enhanced
• Performance improvements
• Improved financial calculations
• Updated User Manual and Help File

Here's more information on Total Access Statistics 14.1 Enhancements.

The Free Trial was updated so you can experience it yourself.

Existing Total Access Statistics owners can upgrade at a discounted price.

September 26, 2016

We released update 16.00.0030 for Total Access Startup 2016 to address a few issues:

• Special Handling for Autoexec Macros
• Run the Administrator Program on Machines without Microsoft Access Installed
• User Manual and Help File Updated

For more information, visit our Total Access Startup 2016 update page. Existing customers were notified via email for the free update.

Total Access Startup lets you centrally manage the deployment of Access applications for each user. Download the Free Trial to experience it yourself.

September 7, 2016

Total Access Analyzer, the most popular Microsoft Access add-in, offers comprehensive documentation and analysis of your MS Access databases so you can better understand individual objects, cross-references between objects, procedure and data flow diagrams, VBA module analysis, and much more. Detecting over 300 ways to fix and improve your databases, Total Access Analyzer improves the quality of your work, teaches you best practices, and increases your productivity.

Build 32 was released with enhancements and fixes listed by version:

• Access 2016 Build: 16.00.0032
• Access 2013 Build: 15.00.0032
• Access 2010 Build: 14.50.0032
• Access 2007 Build: 12.95.0032

Existing Total Access Analyzer owners were notified to download the update.

August 24, 2016

Total Visual Agent, the world's most popular maintenance scheduling tool for Microsoft Access/Office and Visual Basic 6 (VB6) is now available for Microsoft Access 2016 (and earlier). This is the ninth major release of Total Visual Agent and introduces many enhancements to automate maintenance chores easier than ever.

To keep your Microsoft Access databases healthy, you need to regularly compact them. For disaster recovery, you should also be making backup copies of your database regularly. You may also have regular tasks such as printing reports that are performed regularly. Total Visual Agent does this and much more on a schedule you specify. Run tasks hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or just one time. Perform database chores, run Access macros or Windows command lines.

A complete audit trail is maintained, and you can even be notified by email if something goes wrong. Total Visual Agent can also be run as a Windows service to restart if the machine reboots and for added security since a user doesn't need to be logged in.

Total Visual Agent 2016 leverages our vast expertise, and offers the best database management solution with many new features:

• Supports Microsoft Access 2016
• Supports Windows 8 and 10
• Does Not Require Access to be Installed on your PC
• Database Lock Error Identifies Offending Machines
• Activity Log is Separated from Settings Database
• Activity Log Shows Duration of Each Activity
• Email Notifications Support TLS and Office365 SMTP
• Tasks are Not Run at the End of an Event
• Interval Enabled/Disabled Status Shown on the Event Form
• More Robust Windows Service Feature
• Improved Monitor Settings Tab
• Default Location of Archive and Extract Folders Moved
• Improved Setup Program
• New user manual and help file
• and More...

Download the Free Trial to experience it yourself.

Existing Total Visual Agent owners can upgrade at a discounted price.

August 15, 2016

With the release of Total Access Emailer for Microsoft Access 2016, we've released updates for versions for Access 2013, 2010, and 2007:

• Version 15.7 for Access 2013
• Version 14.7 for Access 2010
• Version 12.7 for Access 2007

Existing customers with a current priority support agreement receive free upgrades. Customers without a support contract can upgrade for a nominal fee.

Running as an Access add-in Wizard, Total Access Emailer lets you send personalized emails to everyone in your table or query. Easily customize messages using fields in your data source, attach files on disk, and add Access reports as PDF files that can be filtered for each recipient.

A variety of new features are added to the X.7 version:

• Validate the Email Addresses in Your Email Blast Before Sending It
• Save Attachment Files to Disk in Addition to or Instead of Emailing
• Updated Documentation
• Support for Office365 and other SMTP Services using TLS

For more details, visit the New Total Access Emailer X.7 Features page

Download the Free Trial to experience it yourself.

Existing Total Access Emailer owners can upgrade at a discounted price.

June 30, 2016

A few years ago, we migrated our email service to Microsoft's Office365 cloud service. Overall, it's been very reliable and eliminated the challenges we had hosting Exchange ourselves. It let us get to our emails using Outlook installed on Windows, any internet browser, and smartphones. Office365 also offered other Office product online (Access Web Apps, Excel, Word, etc.), SharePoint and OneDrive Business.

Unfortunately, on the morning of June 30th, we discovered:

• Delays sending and receiving emails Some emails were bouncing back from recipients who couldn't validate our Office365 Exchange Server's SMTP (protection.outlook.com) with our domain name.
• That meant the Exchange SMTP server was no longer considered a trusted sender of emails from the @fmsinc.com domain.
• Our use of the Office365 SMTP server to send emails with our Total Access Emailer product was also failing to authenticate against the server

Needless to say, we aren’t happy about this experience which has impact us, our clients using Office365, and Office365 customers around the country.

For more information, including Microsoft's response, read our new blog post:
Microsoft Office365 Exchange Server Performance Degradation and SMTP Problems

June 13, 2016

Total Access Emailer, the most popular email program for Microsoft Access, is now available for Access 2016 (32 and 64-bit versions).

Running as an Access add-in Wizard, Total Access Emailer lets you send personalized emails to everyone in your table or query. Easily customize messages using fields in your data source, attach files on disk, and add Access reports as PDF files that can be filtered for each recipient.

A variety of new features are added to the Microsoft Access 2016 version:

• Validate the Email Addresses in Your Email Blast Before Sending It
• Save Attachment Files to Disk
• Preview Saving Files to Disk
• New VBA Function to Preview Email Blasts with Files
• Code Generator Supports Preview Email with Save Folder
• Updated Documentation
• Support for Office365 and other SMTP Services using TLS

For more details, visit the New Total Access Emailer Features page

Download the Free Trial to experience it yourself.

Existing Total Access Emailer owners can upgrade at a discounted price.

May 4, 2016

Total Access Statistics is now available for Microsoft Access 2016 (32 and 64-bit versions). Running as an Access add-in Wizard, Total Access Statistics generates a wide range of numerical analysis beyond the power of queries. All results are in Access tables that you can add to your queries, forms and reports.

Total Access Statistics includes a VBA programmatic interface with a royalty-free runtime distribution library so you can add the advanced analysis into your Access applications for distribution to others.

Download the Free Trial to experience it yourself.

Existing Total Access Statistics owners can upgrade at a discounted price.

April 11, 2016

We are delighted to announce new versions of Total Access Startup for Microsoft Access 2016 and 2013. Total Access Startup makes it easy to deploy the latest version of your Access database to each user's desktop and launch it with the right version of Access.

Many new features were added:

• Support for Microsoft Access 2016 and 2013 while specifying bitness: 32-bit, 64-bit or both
• Optionally specify a specific range of allowable Microsoft Access versions
• New tabbed Administrator Wizard interface to simplify setting the options
• Ability to add a graphic file for a professional splash screen as the program loads (including replacing the Access splash screen)
• Add an icon to the distributed shortcut from our library of 1,150+ icons
• Customize and localize any of the user messages to your own words and language
• New manual and help file
• For additional details, visit New Features in Total Access Startup 2016

Download the Free Trial to experience it yourself.

Existing Total Access Startup customers can upgrade at a discounted price.

March 9, 2016

On March 8, 2016, Microsoft released an update KB3085515 for Office 2010. It addressed some VBA issues for Excel. Unfortunately, the update of the VBE7.DLL file causes many Microsoft Access databases to fail. A heated thread on the Microsoft Community forum describes the problem: KB3085515 breaks MS Access 2010 reference

FMS President Luke Chung wrote this blog post to describe the cause of the problem, and the impact it has on Access wizards and databases people create. Information is also provided with illustrated step-by-step screenshots to uninstall the update.

Microsoft Office 2010 Update KB3085515 Causes Access ACCDE and MDE Databases to Crash

March 7, 2016

Learn how to setup Windows Remote Desktop Connections so you can run other PCs from your machine. Whether it's another PC on your desk, across the hall or another site, Remote Desktop lets you run other machines without leaving your chair. This new paper covers how to configure a PC to allow this, troubleshoot some of the common problems and enable your connection to take advantage of multiple monitors.

New Paper: Tips and Techniques for Setting Up Remote Desktop Connections and Using Multiple Displays

January 7, 2016

We are delighted to announce new versions of Total Access Detective for Microsoft Access 2010 and 2007.

In conjunction with the release of Total Access Detective for Access 2016, we've added many of the new features for the 2010 and 2007 versions to help you pinpoint differences between your Access databases and objects.

For details, visit:

• Total Access Detective 2010, Version 14.5 Enhancements (replaces version 14.0)
• Total Access Detective 2007, Version 12.9 Enhancements (replaces version 12.8)

This is a free upgrade for people on a support contract. Other existing Total Access Detective customers can upgrade at a discounted price.

December 14, 2015

FMS President Luke Chung participated in a live studio interview with Greta Van Susteren on her evening show, On the Record. Discussing the tragic San Bernardino, CA terrorist incident, Greta questioned how the State Department could have allowed the terrorists to enter the country. Luke confirmed how Google and Twitter searches can be used to screen immigrants, along with the challenges of tracking people intent on hiding their identities and activities with multiple aliases.

FMS has experience with law enforcement and counter-terrorism through our Sentinel Visualizer data visualization program that helps analysts find hidden relationships among people, places, and events. (more media)

If you don't get our newsletter emailed to you, here it is:

FMS December 2015 Newsletter

December 18, 2015

We are delighted to announce the release of Total Access Detective for Microsoft Access 2016 and 2013. Total Access Detective lets you quickly find differences between any two databases or two objects in your current database. Know exactly what changed at the table, field, property, control, macro line and VBA module code level. You can even compare tables for data differences.

The latest version offers many enhancements from the previous versions:

• Support for the 32 and 64-bit versions of Access 2016 and 2013
• Module and Text Comparison Option to Ignore Line Numbers
• Search Bar to Filter Objects and Properties by Name
• See and Filter Tables based on Whether it’s Linked
• Procedures with Differences List
• New Manual and Help File

For more information on the enhancements, visit: Total Access Detective 2016 and 2013

Existing Total Access Detective customers can upgrade for a discounted price.

December 2015

Total Access Analyzer, the most popular Microsoft Access add-in, is now shipping for Microsoft Access 2016. Total Access Analyzer offers comprehensive documentation and analysis of your MS Access databases so you can better understand individual objects, cross-references between objects, procedure and data flow diagrams, VBA module analysis, and much more. Detecting over 300 ways to fix and improve your databases, Total Access Analyzer improves the quality of your work, teaches you best practices, and increases your productivity.

Total Access Analyzer 2016 includes many new features to help Microsoft Access developers create better solutions:

• Support for Microsoft Access 2016, 32 and 64 bit versions
• New Suggestion: Incorrect Link to Subforms
• New Suggestion: Relationship Field Cross-Reference and Field Type Comparison
• Enhanced Cross-Reference of Aliased Tables in Queries
• Pass-Through Queries are Not Cross-Referenced
• Windows 10 Support
• New Manual and Context Sensitive Help

For additional details, visit New Features in Total Access Analyzer 2016. Existing customers can upgrade at a discounted price. A demo version is available.

December 2015

Total Access Speller helps you avoid typos on the screens your users see. Spell check labels, captions, validation text, status bar, navigation bar, and other properties to avoid embarrassing mistakes. It is now available for Microsoft Access 2016. A free trial is also available.

October 21, 2015

Microsoft Office 2016 was recently released. For the most part, Microsoft Access 2016 didn't change much. Unfortunately, it includes a serious bug that makes it challenging to adopt it.

Picture images on forms and reports (which work in MS Access 2013 and earlier) appear blank in the 32-bit version of MS Access 2016.

Learn more about the issues and solutions in this blog post: Microsoft Access 2016 and Invisible Picture Images

October 10, 2015

We've redesigned our website with a new home page, menu system, search, and other features to make our site more appealing, more functional, and easier to navigate.

It's now hosted by the Microsoft Azure cloud with a SQL Azure database.

We hope you like the new design.

August 2015

In conjunction with the release of Total Access Analyzer for Microsoft Access 2013, we've created updates for earlier versions of MS Access:

• Version 14.5 for Access 2010
• Version 12.95 for Access 2007
• Version 11.95 for Access 2003

Click on the links for detailed information on the new features. Customers on an annual support contract receive the new versions for free. Other customers can purchase an upgrade.

Learn more about the updates in this blog post: Total Access Analyzer 2010, 2007 and 2003 Updates Ships

July 29, 2015, Neil Cavuto's Coast-to-Coast Show

FMS President Luke Chung had a live interview on July 29 with Neil Cavuto on his FOX Business News show Coast-to-Coast. Luke chatted about text and email technology related to NFL Quarterback Tom Brady's destruction of his smartphone. Unfortunately, Fox did not release an online copy of the interview, so we can't share it. Read more information in Luke's blog about the experience: Appearance on FOX Business News for Tom Brady's Destroyed Text Messages.

July 6, 2015

The most popular Microsoft Access add-in of all time, Total Access Analyzer provides detailed documentation and analysis of MS Access databases to help you better understand how your objects work together and 300+ ways to detect errors, find unused objects and VBA code, improve performance, and conform to best practices.

Total Access Analyzer is now available for Microsoft Access 2013 with many new features:

• Supports Microsoft Access 2013, 32 and 64-bit versions
• New documentation of Conditional Formatting
• Documentation of Navigation Control and Buttons
• Documentation of Web Controls
• New Control Type Reports
• Support Procedure Calls to Libraries
• 3 New Module VBA Coding Suggestions
• Enhanced VBA Module Parser for Compiler Conditionals
• New Search Bar for Selecting Objects
• Improved Open Documentation Form
• Report Filter Shows Count of Issues
• New Treeview with 64-bit support
• Updated user manual and help file
• and more!

Here's a complete list of New Features.

For more information on the the new Total Access Analyzer read our blog post: Total Access Analyzer Ships for Microsoft Access 2013.

June 1, 2015

With all the new features added to Total Access Admin 2013 in April, an updated version 11.6 for Access 2003 was released.

The primary difference between the 2003 and 2013 version is that the 2003 version doesn't require installing Access 2007 or later on the machine in order to support the ACCDB database format. It supports Access databases in MDB formats and does not require Access to be installed on the PC.

The new version replaces version 11.5 and includes many new features:

• Translates obscure computer names to a more understandable user name from a list you maintain.
• Enhances the activity log database to include user names.
• Increases the maximum number of databases that can be simultaneously monitored from 50 to 100.
• Supports specifying a time for the program to quit (exit).
• Adds new command line parameters to specify the hours and seconds to wait before quitting.
• Adds setup options to install for the current user or machine to support User Access Control rights as established by your Windows login.
• Includes a new user manual and help file.

Visit our New Features page for details.

April 22, 2015

Total Access Admin lets you monitor users going in and out of your databases in real-time. See who's currently in your database and who recently exited, create a log of connections and disconnects, compact the database after everyone exits, etc. Monitor all the databases across your network from one installation of Total Access Admin.

Total Access Admin 2013 includes many new features. You can now maintain a list to translate computer names to more friendly user names, manage up to 100 database in one screen (up from 50), specify a time to close the program, more command line parameters, new forms to view the activity log, and more. Read our New Features page for details.

Download the free, fully-functional Trial Version to see how helpful Total Access Admin can be for you. Total Access Admin 2013 supports ACCDB databases created in Microsoft Access 2013, 2010 and 2007, plus MDB databases created in any version of Access. Existing customers can upgrade at a discounted price.

Microsoft MVP Daniel Pineault wrote a nice review of our Total Access Detective product to find differences between his Microsoft Access databases:

Final Verdict

"I am once again quite confident in putting my stamp of approval on this tool. If you are in a situation in which you quickly need to identify all the differences between multiple databases, FMS' Total Access Detective will make short work of the job at hand! ...

A very nice, easy to use and most importantly, effective and thorough tool!"

To learn more about what Daniel discovered and his experience, read his article: Total Access Detective – Review

Total Access Detective Review by Daniel Pineault

March 26-28, 2015, Malvern, PA

Microsoft held their first US MVP Summit outside of Redmond at their offices outside of Philadelphia. FMS President Luke Chung participated and met with fellow Microsoft Access MVPs and MVPs with other specialties.

We've completely revamped our Microsoft Access to SQL Server Upsizing Resource Center with links to all our related whitepapers and Microsoft resources to help with the whole upsizing process and use of SQL Server Express. We have several new and updated resources:

• Microsoft SQL Server Express: Version Comparison Matrix and Free Downloads
  For the first time, all the different versions of SQL Server Express from 2005 to 2014 are shown, compared, and referenced with download links. This content required extensive research to document the details of which operating system each SQL Server version supports. Just because Microsoft web pages list the versions they support doesn't necessarily mean it works when you actually try to install it.
• Automating the Backup of Your Microsoft SQL Server Express Databases
  If you're using SQL Server Express, you still need to create backups of the database. Here's how to automate it.
• When and How to Upsize Microsoft Access Databases to SQL Server
  The original version of this was written for Microsoft when they selected us for a joint national campaign a decade ago to promote Microsoft Access to SQL Server Upsizing. We've updated it to better explain why and why not people should upsize their Access databases and an overview of what the options are and what to do.

New Microsoft Access to SQL Server Upsizing Resource Center

Total Access Emailer lets you send personalized email blasts from Microsoft Access databases using your data and reports. It bypasses the limitations of Microsoft Outlook and MAPI by using SMTP.

Google offers a free SMTP server for gmail accounts that you can use with Total Access Emailer. Google recently added an extra security setting that you need to specify to enable the smtp.gmail.com feature.

Read our updated Total Access Emailer FAQ for more details.

November 5, 2014

We are delighted to announce the release of Total Visual SourceBook 2013. Total Visual SourceBook is our royalty-free source code library for Microsoft Access/Office VBA developers and Visual Basic 6 (VB6) developers.

The new 2013 version is an upgrade to our Total Visual SourceBook 2007 version. The new version is especially designed for the new features introduced in Microsoft Access/Office/VBA 2013 and 2010. It can also run in Access/Office 2007 and older versions through Access/Office 2000.

New Features

Total Visual SourceBook 2013 includes 35 new modules, 25,000+ more lines of code, enhancements to existing modules including VBA code that’s compatible with 32 and 64-bit versions of Office.

The user code database can now be upsized to SQL Server to simplify sharing code among your developer team. The new version also includes many enhancements to the code browser to simplify your experience in viewing, searching, adding, editing, and applying different error handlers to the source code.

For a complete list of enhancements, visit our New Features page.

Additional Resources

• Overview and Screenshots
• Summary of Code Categories
• Module and Class List
• Two Page PDF Product Flier
• Sample Code
• Awards and Reviews

For more information on Total Visual SourceBook read our Blog post: Total Visual SourceBook 2013 Ships

September 23, 2014

FMS President Luke Chung was quoted in today's New York Times article HealthCare.gov Is Given an Overhaul. Robert Pear asked Luke about the overhaul that the Healthcare.gov web site needs. He quoted Luke with:

“Instead of being user-friendly, the original website was user-hostile”

In response to the quote, Luke wrote a new blog post covering some of the issues the original designers of the Healthcare.gov site missed, and how a data entry application should be designed. It's not that difficult if you know what you're doing and have done it before:

Designing a Data Entry System Properly; Overhauling the Healthcare.gov Web Site

August 18, 2014

Total Access Analyzer is the most popular Microsoft Access database documentation program. In our pursuit of excellence, we have released free updates of Total Access Analyzer 2007 and 2010.

Two updates were released:

• For Microsoft Access 2010, Version 14.01.0007
• For Microsoft Access 2007, Version 12.91.0007

The updates include the following fixes and enhancements:

• Module Cross-Reference incorrectly listing procedures that didn't exist when they existed
• Improved SQL query parsing to better cross-reference table and field names passed as function parameters
• For secure databases, document queries even when logged in without admin rights
• Support documenting library references of long DLL file names and paths
• Setup issues resolved for certain machines and motherboards
• For Microsoft Access 2010, 64-bit version, support Windows 8

Click on the links above for more details. Existing customers should have received email notification to download an update. If your email address changed, contact us to update your information.

Visit our new Microsoft Outlook Tips and Techniques site where we've consolidated our white papers on using Microsoft Outlook more effectively:

• Add a delay to your messages so you can catch mistakes
• The difference of the impact of time zones on smartphones versus computers

And more!

Evening of September 8, 2014, Microsoft Headquarters

FMS President Luke Chung is the featured guest speaker for the Microsoft Access User Group meeting in New York City.

Luke will discuss and demonstrate FMS products for Microsoft Access, and answer any questions about his experiences with technology, media, and business.

Join him at this free event. More details to follow on our Upcoming Events page.

We've updated several white papers:

• Microsoft Access Database Compact and Repair to Minimize Corruption and Avoid Bloat (by Access Version)
• Creating an Annual 12 Month Summary Report without VBA Code by Creatively Using a Microsoft Access Crosstab Query
• How to Rename a File or Folder (Directory) from VBA, Visual Basic 6, Microsoft Office/Access/Excel
• From Microsoft: Free eBook: Microsoft Access Keyboard Shortcuts

Visit the main Microsoft Access Developer and VBA Programming Help Center site for more resources.

July 31, 2014

Total Access Statistics is the most advanced data analysis program for Microsoft Access. It extends the power of Microsoft Access queries with a wide range of statistical calculations including percentiles, frequency distributions, correlations, regressions, rankings, running totals, financial cash flow analysis, data normalization, crosstabs with Chi-Square, t-Tests, ANOVA, non-parametrics, probabilities, and more.

Total Access Statistics is now available for Microsoft Access 2013. Total Access Statistics 2013 includes many enhancements since the prior release of Total Access Statistics 2010:

• Support for the 32 and 64 bit versions of Access 2013 with separate add-ins for each
• New redistributable runtime libraries to support Access 2013, 2010, 2007, and 2003
• Support for Windows 8 (and all Windows versions supported by Access)
• Improved performance when analyzing large data sets
• For Percentiles, when assigning percentile values to a field in your table, you can specify calculations such as quartiles, quintiles, octiles, deciles, etc. rather than just percentile
• Field format is set to Percent for percentage fields in the Frequency, Crosstab (when percentages are in columns), and Chi-Square details tables
• When tables are generated from the add-in, the field column widths are resized to show the entire field name and data
• Updated user manual and help file

Here's a complete list of new features.

Download the free trial version and send your own personalized emails from Microsoft Access.

You've created a Microsoft Access database solution and have successfully distributed it to many people. Everyone is running it properly but one machine is triggering this error. The error message makes no sense and everything you try fails to resolve the problem. What's going on?

Read our new paper Microsoft Access "Class Not Registered" Run-time Error '-2147221164 (80040154)' to learn more about why this occurs and how to resolve it.

How did the IRS not have backups and lose Lois Lerner's emails and other files? Who came up with their backup and disaster recovery plan? Wrong policies, incorrect execution? Incompetence or intentional?

Hannity TV Show on June 19, 2014

A 3.5 minute live interview with Sean Hannity in New York with Luke at their Washington, DC studio.

Sean Hannity Radio Show, June 20, 2014

A more in-depth 14 minute discussion with David Kennedy on the radio show. Luke starts at about 2:30 after the introduction.

Additional appearances on the Sean Hannity TV and Radio Shows, Other Shows

Have you been curious about Microsoft cloud offering of Office365? No longer interested in hosting your own Exchange Server? Want to have your infrastructure in a secure data center with high reliability and resilience?

If so, we have Free Trials for Office365. We also have trial links to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Test it out and see if you like it.

We switched to Office365 over a year ago starting with our Exchange Server. We already had our email hosted offsite, but moving it to Office365 was relatively smooth and made it easier and cheaper to support different mobile devices. We then migrated our SharePoint platform to Office365. That was a bit more challenging with the changes between SharePoint versions.

Now with our hosted SharePoint site, we're experimenting with Access 2013 Web Apps that are integrated directly with SQL Azure databases for our internal and external users. Since it's hosted on SQL Azure, you can also link to the tables directly from your Access desktop databases.

Try it out for free and see what you think.

FMS has worked with Microsoft Access since it debuted in 1992. There have been many Access versions since then with multiple service packs, hot fixes and updates. This paper offers a list of what and when it was released, feature differences between versions and additional details for the more recent versions.

To help us remember all the versions and changes, we've written a new article summarizing the evolution of Microsoft Access: Microsoft Access Version Releases, Service Packs, Hotfixes, and Updates History.

Here's a related article we introduced in the last newsletter that is updated with a link to the new Microsoft Access 2013 SP1 Runtime download: Microsoft Access Runtime Distribution and Free Downloads

Visit our Microsoft Access Developer Help Center for additional articles with tips for creating great solutions.

June 5, 2014

Total Access Emailer is the most popular email automation program for Microsoft Access. It simplifies the sending of personalized emails with Access data and reports to everyone on your list.

Total Access Emailer is now available for Microsoft Access 2013. Total Access Emailer 2013 includes many enhancements since the prior release of Total Access Emailer 2010 and the Version x.6 for pre-Access 2010 versions:

• Enhanced setup for Windows 8 and 64-bit installations
• Support differences in VBA code between Microsoft Access 2013 and 2010
• Improved support for linked tables in SQL Server and Access databases including situations when connections are lost
• User interface improvements to better manage editing and duplicating email blast specifications
• Professional Version VBA library detects if the user's machine has not run the runtime distribution EXE
• Improved display of record counts for repeating multiple email blast broadcasts
• Improved error handing and reporting
• Updated user manual and help file

Here's a complete list of new features.

Download the free trial version and send your own personalized emails from Microsoft Access.

Read our new paper Microsoft Access Error 3045 Could Not Use Database; File Already in Use May Not be Due to an Exclusive Lock to learn how different workgroup security files may trigger this error.

Read our updated paper on why you should Avoid Using Decimal Fields in Microsoft Access Tables

Remote Desktop lets you connect to a computer located elsewhere and run it as if you were there. Unfortunately, the remote computer’s Start menu only shows options to "Log Off" and "Disconnect". It does not offer the standard "Shut Down" options: Log off, Shut down, Restart, Stand by, Hibernate. If you attempt to use Ctrl+Alt+Del, the command is captured by the local machine and not the remote one.

Read our paper on Rebooting a Remote Desktop Computer to Restart It on how to get around this problem.

The Microsoft Access 2013 Runtime, Service Pack 1 was just released. Get the free download if you want it. Keep in mind that many features which exist in Microsoft Access 2010 no longer exist in Access 2013, so if you need them, you may be better off staying with the Access 2010 runtime which is also free. Visit our Microsoft Access Runtime Download page for more details and free download links for the different Microsoft Access versions.

Microsoft Access program managers gave four presentations at the recent SharePoint conference in Las Vegas. Their presentations covered how Access 2013 Web Apps can be created on SharePoint 2013 and automatically uses a SQL Server database (hosted in SQL Azure).

Links to the four videos are here: Microsoft Access Videos from the SharePoint Conference

March 2014 Email Newsletter

Sign up if you don't already have it delivered to your Inbox.

March 21, 2014

Total Visual Agent 2013 with support for Microsoft Access 2013, 2010, and 2007 is now shipping. The 2013 version includes many new features from the 2007 version:

• Support for Microsoft Access 2010 and 2013
• Support for 64 bit Operating Systems
• Simplified Startup and Easier Management of Multiple Microsoft Access Versions
• Import Settings from Multiple Versions of Total Visual Agent
• Test All Actions for an Event, Database, Directory or Task Group
• Create Events that Run Every X Minutes
• Create Events that are Limited to Periods Spanning Midnight
• Process Directories with Managed Databases
• Data Extract Tables are Keyed
• Run Macros for Database Password Protected Databases
• Pause for a Fractional Minute
• Compressed Archive File Names Support Multiple Extensions
• More Detailed Activity History Log with Deletions
• More Detailed Database Statistics with Deletions
• Add Your Comments to Events, Directories, and Actions
• Simplified Addition of New Actions
• More Modern and Improved User Interface
• New User Manual and Help File
• And More...

A fully-functional, free trial is available. Existing owners of Total Access Agent can upgrade at a discounted price.

February 19, 2014

Two new versions of Total Access Speller are shipping for Microsoft Access 2013 and 2010. Many new features were added since the 2007 version:

• Support for Microsoft Access 2010 and 2013, with 32 and 64-bit support
• Machine and User Installation Options
• Improved Spell Checking of Macros
• New Option to Ignore Invisible Controls
• Property List Shows Built-In Status
• Enhanced user manual and help file

A free trial is available. Existing owners of Total Access Speller can order an upgrade at a discounted price.

Creators Still in Demand on Health Care Website

February 11, 2014

Robert Pear of The New York Times called Luke and quoted him in this article: Creators Still in Demand on Health Care Website

The contract for the Healthcare.gov site has moved from CGI Federal to Accenture, but Accenture doesn’t really have a better team to put in place. In the typical large government contractor world, the winner of a contract simply hires the existing team and moves them to their payroll. The people who do the work remain and change their business cards. Do we really expect significant improvements from a team that created the original site and thought it was ready for the public?

"This appears to be a typical government contract shuffle,” Luke Chung, the president of FMS, a software development company in Vienna, Va., said of the handoff. “A new company wins the contract and hires many of the old people. It happens all the time in government."

December 15, 2013

FMS President Luke Chung provides a detailed technical assessment of the new Healthcare.gov web site in this new blog post

Who Thinks the Relaunched Healthcare.gov Performance Metrics are Acceptable?

Thanksgiving Week 2013

A crazy week of media. Before leaving town, FMS President Luke Chung was interviewed in Washington DC. Then while visiting family for Thanksgiving, the national media sent news crews and booked studio time in Sarasota, Florida to get his comments about the soon to be updated Healthcare.gov web site.

Luke appeared on a panel with three others for a live interview discussing the relaunched Healthcare.gov web site.

His appearance is available and summarized by Noah Rothman in this article: Tamron Hall Interrogates Tech Expert After He Criticized Supposed ‘Improvements’ to ACA Site

ObamaCare: Mistake or moneymaker?

A one-on-one interview with Clayton Morris for four minutes discussing how large government contractors profit from delivering systems that don't work:

"If we follow the money, we'll see the stink in the system...Too Big to Fire"

Featuring Sarasota Bay behind him.

Tory Dunnan had a Skype call with Luke to better understand the capacity of the relaunched Healthcare.gov site. This interview was cut into multiple stories that aired all day long. Here's one of them appearing at 1:30:

"So the challenge isn't how many lanes do you have on the highway, but it's how fast the cars can go down the highway. Because if there's any breakdown, you can have a big traffic jam and pile up behind you."

More details: Deadline Day: Obama administration 'on track' for website goal, agency says

Crucial Weekend for Healthcare Web Site

A portion of Luke's taped interview from yesterday was also included in the following morning's Today Show at 1:06:

"The system either works or it doesn't work....the 50,000 number that they've put out is a little ambiguous because what one wants to know is how many people per hour can get through the system."

Deadline hours away for Obamacare website fixes

The Obama administration has just one day to get its Healthcare.gov website running more efficiently, but officials are already trying to limit expectations once again.

This was the lead story of the evening news. Starting at 0:45, Luke makes a few comments in response to Secretary Sebelius' comments that people should use the new Healthcare.gov web site during off-peak hours:

"It tells me the system isn't full baked. This system should be able to accommodate as many people who want to get on as possible."..cut to President Obama..."50,000 is not a number that's unheard of for websites to be able to support at one time. So I think the challenge is not just the number of users, but whether there are still bugs in the system that will prevent the process from running smoothly."

FMS President Luke Chung has been a technical resource for Robert Pear of the New York Times since he originally quoted him in an article that kicked off all this media attention on October 8th. Yesterday they chatted about how a web site needs to be built to support maximum volume which will come on the deadline date. Quite a challenge since they can't even support the early volume.

His article appears on the front page: A Plea to Avoid Crush of Users at Health Site

Luke Chung, the president of FMS, a database company in Virginia, said building the website to handle 50,000 simultaneous users was “not unreasonable.” But he said the government must be prepared to handle much larger numbers at peak times like Dec. 23, just as the Internal Revenue Services does at the tax filing deadline in April.

White House: Enroll in Obamacare, but not too fast

After confirming he wasn't involved with the Healthcare.gov project, Luke was interviewed by Leigh Ann Caldwell about the new rollout while trying to board to flight at the airport:

Luke Chung, president and founder of Virginia-based software development company FMS Inc., said success for the website would be determined by both the number of users as well as how long they are in the system. He compared it to a highway, noting that 50,000 people traveling 60 miles per hour is smooth traffic while the same number going 10 miles per hour is a jam...Chung cited December 23 as the most significant deadline, noting that demand would be "huge" because people by nature wait until the last minute to act.

Will HealthCare.gov be in good health by Nov. 30?

Greta van Susteren is on vacation, so Luke chatted with Kimberly who was in New York City while he was on Greta's studio in Washington, DC. They discussed how these contractors are "Too Big to Fire"

"Over time, I'm beginning to see that these government contractors who took over this project have essentially made every decision that favors them as much as possible – to maximize the cost to taxpayers, to maximize their profits."

Related article by Greg Richter based on the broadcast: Software Developer: ACA Website Designers Just Lining Own Pockets

November 22, 2013, Seattle, WA

While attending the Microsoft MVP summit and Microsoft Access Day, CNN tracked down FMS President Luke Chung to interview him for the evening show.

He taped a segment from the Seattle studio which provided a nice Seattle Space Needle backdrop. Former Microsoft Access Program Manager, Tim Getsch, who is now the owner of Check Out My Cards (comc.com) joined him for the shoot.

Luke was asked to comment on the need for anonymous shopping on the Healthcare.gov website. He appears at 1:50 for a short quote in this 4:30 story:

"This is something people expect when they visit any web site to not disclose any personal information until they're at a point where they want to make a commitment to buy."

Watch the video: Where's the anonymous shopping perk?

November 21, 2013, Bellevue, WA

FMS President Luke Chung joined several other Microsoft Access MVP speakers at this one day event for Microsoft Access developers. In addition to Luke, speakers included the organizer Armen Stein of J Street Technology, George Hepworth, Tom van Stiphout, Andrew Couch from the UK, and Kevin Bell from Microsoft.

Luke discussed upsizing Microsoft Access databases to SQL Server and SQL Azure.

Visit the Access Day web site for more information.

November 13, 2013, Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC

FMS President Luke Chung testified before the US House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security about the Healthcare.gov website. This committee is responsible for all security issues on .GOV web sites. The hearing was entitled: Hearing: Cyber Side-Effects: How Secure is the Personal Information Entered into the Flawed Healthcare.gov? Luke is on the second of two panels.

Click on the blog post link for video of his five minute prepared testimony and responses to Chairman Michael McCaul. His written testimony is also available. Under oath, he will make a 5 minute statement then respond to questions from all the members of the committee: Invited by the House Committee on Homeland Security to Testify about Healthcare.gov

FMS President Luke Chung continues to influence the national discourse on Healthcare.gov. The technically flawed website even led to President Obama talking about web site design. As someone who identified serious problems from the day it debuted (see earlier blog posts), Luke has been on numerous national TV and radio programs discussing the issues beyond too many users.

He also wrote a new blog post on how to redesign the site: Creating a Healthcare.gov Web Site that Works

	November 7: Tech Expert: Scrap the Obamacare Site and Start Over in The Fiscal Times. November 13: No Hope Left for Obamacare’s Website, Techies Say
	November 6: Greta van Susteren's On The Record Show on Fox News
	October 18 and 23; November 5 and 14: Sean Hannity's TV and Radio Shows
	October 24: MSNBC Chris Jansing October 25: Commentary on Luke's interview from NewsBusters: Software Expert Slams Healthcare.Gov On MSNBC: ‘This Really Shouldn’t Be That Difficult’
	October 18: CNN Situation Room with Brian Todd and Wolf Blitzer November 14: Official: Hackers tried repeatedly to attack Obamacare website November 22: Where's the Anonymous Shopping Perk?
	October 17: NBC Today Show with Tom Costello October 17: NBC Nightly News with Tom Costello

Blog Post of the national media coverage

Read the blog from FMS President, Luke Chung, about his experience using the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) web site when it debuted on October 1st.

Healthcare.gov is a Technology Disaster

Regardless of the politics, this web site is not ready for prime time. Luke offers his assessment with screenshots of several crashes he experienced. Bad design, bad development, and seemingly no testing for what should be an enterprise quality application.

As one of the few non-partisan technical reviews of the website, the blog has attracted a lot of media attention and showcased our decades of database development expertise.

Michael Shear of the New York Times interviewed and quoted Luke in this October 8th article: Health Exchange Delays Tied to Software Crash in Early Rush

"It's poorly designed," said Luke Chung, the president of a database company in Virginia who has publicly criticized the site in recent days. "People higher up are given the excuse that there are too many users. That's a convenient excuse for the managers to pass up the chain."

Luke was included in the national morning broadcast of CBS News. Read the text or watch the video in Obamacare website looks “like nobody tested it,” programmer says

“It wasn’t designed well, it wasn’t implemented well, and it looks like nobody tested it,” said Luke Chung, an online database programmer.

Chung supports the new health care law but said it was not the demand that is crashing the site. He thinks the entire website needs a complete overhaul.

“It’s not even close. It’s not even ready for beta testing for my book. I would be ashamed and embarrassed if my organization delivered something like that,” he said.

Luke was featured in an article on CNN entitled Obamacare glitches known ahead of time? Brian Todd came by the office to learn more about the challenges Luke encountered and the web site actually crashed while he was showing it.

ObamaCare website neither fast or easy? Peter stepped through the site and struggled to even get a user name. Then Luke made a few comments around 1:11 and at the end of the segment:

“It’s written as if it were created by people who had never created a database web application before…This can be fixed in a very short period of time, and it wouldn’t necessarily be that expensive”