Monday, August 26, 2013

MS ACCESS Navigation Pane Add Item Greyed Out 2002,2007 and 2010?

This is a bug resolved by guest posted at:
    office-forums.com


The solution apply to my situation, where I upgraded my secured (user level security) database from MS ACCESS 97 to ACCESS XP (2002) and opened with MS ACCESS 2007.

I couldn't tell you that this always happen. Because I believe I was able to open MS ACCESS XP database in MS ACCESS 2007 and see the Navigation Pane worked the way it suppose to and this is why I was at lost when this happen to me.

Through my (Google) search, it seems it affect MS ACCESS 2003, 2010 too.

Here is a copy of the solution posted at office-forums.com:
===========
You'll need to right click the Navigation Pain bar- select Category - select
Table and Related Views - click Ok when a message appear and wait until it
completes.

Now, right click on the Navigation Pane bar again, select Navigation Options.
Now you should see the left listbox "Categories" filled with one category.
Click add under categories to add one sample name it "test" and now on the
right listbox "Groups for "test" appears and the button at the botton "Add
Group" is enabled.

The so called bug only confuse users if there are nothing in the listboxes
and disabling the buttons is really uncalled for. Something MS Access Team
need to fix.

===========

The solution isn't very neat in that the created 'Table and Related Views' Category can never be deleted. But other than that, things seem to work just fine.

From time to time we all benefited from other people's finding and we should credit them whenever we can.

== Added on Aug. 29, 2013 ======
A problem is discovered on Aug. 29, 2013.
If the .mdb file is in MS ACCESS 2000 format and the category is setup in MS ACCESS 2007, login with MS ACCESS 2010 will remove that (could be all) category. However, if the category was created in MS ACCESS 2010, category will stay if login with older version of the ACCESS.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Cooperation of Android phone(Fone) and tablet(Pad)

Since my first post of the idea in my article "Android mothership tablet for Android phone" back in June 21, 2010, there have been products like ASUS' PadFone/FonePad. However, that isn't exactly what I have in mind in terms of the integration.

My idea is more in the rim of software than hardware. However, the hardware integration can enhance the software implementation.

Now, here are some ideas for the software integration given that you got an Android phone and an Android Tablet with needed communications either through the WIFI or the USB :
1.  Use the phone as the keyboard for the tablet.
2.  Use the phone as the camera for the tablet.
3.  Use the phone as the game control for the tablet.
4.  Use the phone as the GPS for the tablet.
5.  Share the storage between the phone and the tablet - you don't need an app on both device at the same time.
6.  The display may support each other - like X-Window in the *nix world - this allows running apps on the tablet while display it on the phone or vice versa.

While I am writing, I just realize that what I really mean is providing a system level support that allows Android systems to support and share with each other the software and hardware resources.

As I mentioned earlier, using system buses may allow some sharing to be more intimate and efficient.