Beginning Access 2003 VBA

Chapter 10. Advanced Access Programming

We covered a lot of ground in prior chapters exploring how to use VBA to extend your Access applications. This chapter will discuss some advanced programming techniques, but it is not meant to provide exhaustive coverage. This chapter introduces the following techniques:

• Declaring and using standard and external DLLs

• Using automation to control Excel, Word, and Outlook from your Access applications

• Adding ActiveX controls to your forms

• Creating custom code libraries

• Using add-ins

• Implementing transactions in your code

For your convenience, I included the database file and code generated during this chapter for download from Wrox.com.

Using Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs)

Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) are simply compiled code libraries. You already used a DLL when adding a reference to the ADO library (Chapter 5) so that you could work with the ADO object model and the properties, methods, and events for the objects it contains. In this section, you will look at another example of how to use a standard DLL by just adding a reference in your project. You will also look at how to manually declare an external DLL and use it within your code.

Standard DLLs

You can reference libraries such as DLLs by selecting Tools

Try It Out: Using the Microsoft Office Object Library to Create a Custom Command Bar

Let's look at an example of creating custom command bars for your ...