Introduction

When creative juggernaut Adobe announced that it had acquired Macromedia in 2006, long-time Macromedia users wondered what it would mean for their preferred suite of Web development tools, Studio. Would Photoshop’s superior power and depth spell the end of Fireworks, despite the fact that Fireworks has more user-friendly image-optimizing and -exporting capabilities? Would FreeHand survive? Would ColdFusion get lost in the shuffle? For those of us who always used Photoshop and Acrobat as well as the applications in the Studio suite, the question was, How long do we have to wait for better integration of Adobe’s software with Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks? With Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, we have our answers, and the future looks bright for Web developers!

About This Book

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies (we know, it’s a mouthful) is designed to be a hands-on, easy-to-understand guide to the main features in all the CS3 Web development products. The nononsense approach will help you begin to build Web sites by covering the basics in a clear and concise fashion. The way we see it, you’ve got things to do, and reading a book, even a clever one, takes up valuable time. The faster we can help you do something or answer a question, the better.

Introduction

Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) is just now starting to fulfill its promise as a truly transportable file format that enables people to share sophisticated electronic documents across a wide array of otherwise incompatible computer platforms without requiring access to either the software that generated the documents or the fonts used in the documents. Part of the proof of this statement is evidenced in the ever-growing presence of PDF documents, especially on the World Wide Web.

Nowadays, you can hardly browse the Web without encountering sites that present some of their online information as PDF files. In fact, so many sites offer their standard reports, registration and feedback forms, and industry white papers as downloadable PDF files that few seasoned business users remain unfamiliar with the PDF format (even if they’re not exactly sure what it is) or the free Adobe Reader software used to open, read, and print documents saved in it.

Beyond the popularity of PDF for information-sharing on the Internet, PDF is also becoming increasingly popular as the format to use for prepress documents, eBook publishing, document review, and document archiving. To ready PDF files for these additional roles, you naturally graduate from the world of the free Adobe Reader and Acrobat eBook Reader to that of Acrobat 6. Acrobat 6 (which, unlike the free Adobe Reader, you must purchase) is Adobe’s latest version of its all-in-one utility for editing, annotating, and managing documents saved in PDF.

As the name Acrobat implies, this utility enables you to juggle the many roles it can assign PDF files with relative ease. All that’s required of you is a keen sense of the role or roles you want your PDF document to fulfill along with a careful reading of the pertinent sections of this book.

Introduction

Microsoft Access can be an incredibly useful application, but it can also be very frustrating if you don’t know how to make it do what you want it to do. In a perfect world, you’d have a guru around, 24/7 — someone who knows Access inside and out and is willing to guide you along the way, showing you handy little tricks and useful techniques that help you to get the results you need.

Well, I may not be there with you, but this book is the next best thing. I’ve gathered the really useful pieces of information that you need to create powerful queries, very easy-to-use forms, and reports that actually tell the story of what is going on inside your data. Along the way, I make sure to show you the special tricks and techniques that I use.

About This Book

Access Forms & Reports For Dummies is a hands-on guide that uses real-world examples to show you just what you need to know about Access and why you need to know it. You won’t find a bunch of buzzwords and jargon. Rather, you do find the solid information you really need and can’t find elsewhere about creating queries, forms, and reports. Yes, I do give you good, solid information about queries in addition to forms and reports because queries are an essential element that will help you create better forms and reports.

Access Forms & Reports For Dummies is also a reference that you can use as you like. If you have a specific problem you need to solve right now, you can jump directly to the related topic and skip around as much as you want. But if you really want to make Access work for you, I suggest that you read through the entire book because you will discover many things you don’t already know.

Finally, Access Forms & Reports For Dummies is for users of pretty much any version of Access from Access 97 onwards. The basics of queries, forms, and reports haven’t changed much, so you’ll find this book extremely helpful no matter which version of Access you use.

Introduction

Welcome to Access 2007 VBA Programming For Dummies. As you already know (we hope), Microsoft Access is a huge database management program, offering lots of ways to manage data (information). Common uses of Access include managing mailing lists, memberships, scientific and statistical data, entire small businesses, and just about anything else that involves storing and managing large amounts of information.

As the title implies, this book is about using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to enhance the power of Access databases. If you want Access to print words on a check, skip mailing labels that you’ve already used, or manipulate data behind the scenes, you have to write VBA code.

By the time you finish this book, you should know exactly what VBA is all about and how it fits into Access. You’ll discover the meanings of all those obscure terms that programmers throw around — code, variable, array, loop, object — as though they were common knowledge. You’ll be able to write and use your own, custom code, just like advanced programmers do.

This book covers VBA in Access 2007. Although many changes and improvements to Access have occurred in all the versions that Microsoft has released, the VBA programming language has hardly changed a bit over the years. Although Access 2007 looks completely different from previous versions, the underlying objects are virtually unchanged. The code that you see in this book should also work in Access 2000, 2002, and 2003. The vast majority of the code in this book also works just fine even in last century’s versions, such as Access 97.

Introduction

Whoa! What happened to menu bars, toolbars, and all that other stuff I used to have? Well, in case you haven’t noticed yet, they’re all gone. Of course, if you never used Access before in your life, then you’re starting fresh, so never mind. Whether you never used any version of Microsoft Access, and aren’t even sure what a “version” is, you’ve come to the right book. The basic idea behind Microsoft Access is to allow individuals and small businesses to manage large amounts of information the way the big corporations do — with relational databases. The difference is that while the big boys spend millions on computer hardware, software, and staffs of nerdy database-administrator types, Access allows you to do it all yourself with a run-of-the-mill PC and a realistic software budget.

Microsoft Access 2007 is the latest-and-greatest version of a long line of Access versions, starting (not surprisingly) with Version 1. Not that this is the 2,007th version. Somewhere along the way Microsoft switched from using sequential numbers for versions to using years — an idea first pioneered by the automotive industry, which sells things like “2007 Ford Mustangs” as opposed to “Mustang Version 9.3’s.”

Without going into boring detail about what’s new in Access 2007, you find the usual kind of stuff you find in new versions these days — more power, more flexibility, more things you can do with it. And of course — along the lines of the Holy Grail of Everything Computerish these days — more taking advantage of everything the Internet has to offer. But the most noticeable change for the Access-experienced is a whole new look and feel — along with some new ways of doing things.