Chicago Access Users Group meets May 25: Quickbooks integration, Total Access Analyzer from FMS

[Kevin G. Anderson]

What: CAUG Meeting - QuickBooks IIF Files; Total Access Analyzer; CAUG
Social
When: Thursday, May 25, 2006, 6PM
Who: Chris Monaghan and Kevin Anderson
Where: The Information Management Group
200 W. Monroe St. Suite 900
Chicago, IL 60606
[phone]
Location: www.imginc.com/IMG/About+IMG/chicago.htm

[RSVP REQUIRED: email in**@caug.com and add "ATTENDING" to the subject
line. Must RSVP by 10 AM the day of the meeting to be recognized.]

All,

It's time to wrap up another CAUG season. The 2005-2006 campaign has
been a good one as we've welcomed some new speakers, topics, and
members. I want to thank everyone for their participation and special
thanks to IMG, for continuing to be gracious and generous hosts. For
those of you that are new, CAUG will resume again in September.

For this year's final meeting we welcome Chris Monaghan and Kevin
Anderson back to the speakers stand. Chris recently worked on a
project the required integration with QuickBooks, the most popular
accounting program for small businesses. Kevin takes a look at a new
version of a longtime Access product, Total Access Analyzer.

QuickBooks Integration Example
by Christopher Monaghan

Intuit's QuickBooks Accounting package is wildly popular in small
businesses (including my small business). This presentation will
demonstrate how to load your external accounting data into QuickBooks,
using Intuit's IIF Format (Intuit Interchange Format). In Chris'
project, he creates an IIF file from within his Microsoft Access
application.
About Chris
Chris is president of Business Data Designs and a former CAUG VP. He
does independent consulting that includes training and programming. He
has been a regular on the CAUG speaking circuit.

Total Access Analyzer
by Kevin Anderson

FMS Software is a long time provider of Microsoft Access tools and
utilities. Their flagship product, "Total Access Analyzer" has been
around since 1994 has been the winner of every "Best Access Add-In
Award", since that time.

Kevin will give us a quick tour of Total Access Analyzer and will
discuss how it can help the Access professional.

About Kevin
Kevin is president of Anderson Information Technology Inc. He develops
and maintains database system solutions for small and mid-sized
organizations and specializes in Microsoft Access. Kevin is an MCP in
Access and Visual Basic and has an MS in EECS from University of
Illinois - Chicago.

CAUG Social

Help us to celebrate the end of another successful CAUG season by
attending the CAUG Social, right after the meeting. We'll raid the
CAUG coffers, buy a couple of rounds, and toast to another great
season. If you're particularly thirsty, bring some cash as CAUG
generosity doesn't exceed two rounds. The location is yet to be
determined but will be a short walk from the meeting. Please join us!

[Larry Linson]

"Kevin G. Anderson" <kg*****@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:11********************@j55g2000cwa.googlegrou ps.com...

What: CAUG Meeting - QuickBooks IIF Files; Total Access Analyzer; CAUG
Social
When: Thursday, May 25, 2006, 6PM
Who: Chris Monaghan and Kevin Anderson

As strongly as I believe in User Groups, and as good a reputation as CAUG
has, I have to point out the FAQ for this newsgroup,
http://www.mvps.org/access/netiquette.htm which contains the charter, which
does not specifically permit advertising, and the request that you not
advertise anything, even free stuff. Thanks for your consideration in the
future.

[David W. Fenton]

"Larry Linson" <bo*****@localhost.not> wrote in
news:oQccg.4168$oa3.157@trnddc08:

"Kevin G. Anderson" <kg*****@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:11********************@j55g2000cwa.googlegrou ps.com...

What: CAUG Meeting - QuickBooks IIF Files; Total Access
Analyzer; CAUG Social
When: Thursday, May 25, 2006, 6PM
Who: Chris Monaghan and Kevin Anderson

As strongly as I believe in User Groups, and as good a reputation
as CAUG has, I have to point out the FAQ for this newsgroup,
http://www.mvps.org/access/netiquette.htm which contains the
charter, which does not specifically permit advertising, and the
request that you not advertise anything, even free stuff. Thanks
for your consideration in the future.

Oh, puh-leaze, Larry. This is a public service.

Was the announcement of the Access 12 blog an advertisement?

If the charter prohibits announcements of Access user group
meetings, then the charter definitely needs to be revised.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

[PC Datasheet]

Larry is right! If there is going to be complaining about my responses
trying to help posters, then what the OP posted here is pure advertising. It
provides no technical Access help to anyone.

--
PC Datasheet
Your Resource For Help With Access, Excel And Word Applications
Over 1175 users have come to me from the newsgroups requesting help
re******@pcdatasheet.com


"David W. Fenton" <XX*******@dfenton.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xn*********************************@127.0.0.1 ...

"Larry Linson" <bo*****@localhost.not> wrote in
news:oQccg.4168$oa3.157@trnddc08:

"Kevin G. Anderson" <kg*****@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:11********************@j55g2000cwa.googlegrou ps.com...

What: CAUG Meeting - QuickBooks IIF Files; Total Access
Analyzer; CAUG Social
When: Thursday, May 25, 2006, 6PM
Who: Chris Monaghan and Kevin Anderson

As strongly as I believe in User Groups, and as good a reputation
as CAUG has, I have to point out the FAQ for this newsgroup,
http://www.mvps.org/access/netiquette.htm which contains the
charter, which does not specifically permit advertising, and the
request that you not advertise anything, even free stuff. Thanks
for your consideration in the future.

Oh, puh-leaze, Larry. This is a public service.

Was the announcement of the Access 12 blog an advertisement?

If the charter prohibits announcements of Access user group
meetings, then the charter definitely needs to be revised.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

[John Marshall, MVP]

but of course, you are not going to stop abusing the newsgroups or the
participants.

John... Visio MVP
"PC Datasheet" <No****@Spam.Com> wrote in message
news:nr****************@newsread3.news.pas.earthli nk.net...

Larry is right! If there is going to be complaining about my responses
trying to help posters, then what the OP posted here is pure advertising.
It provides no technical Access help to anyone.

[PC Datasheet]

Go play with Arno R and his young boys, you STUPID A$$!!!!!!

"John Marshall, MVP" <la******@stonehenge.ca> wrote in message
news:48********************@magma.ca...

but of course, you are not going to stop abusing the newsgroups or the
participants.

John... Visio MVP
"PC Datasheet" <No****@Spam.Com> wrote in message
news:nr****************@newsread3.news.pas.earthli nk.net...

Larry is right! If there is going to be complaining about my responses
trying to help posters, then what the OP posted here is pure advertising.
It provides no technical Access help to anyone.

[John Marshall, MVP]

A$$ = ASteveSantos?

[Kevin G. Anderson]

Larry Linson wrote:

"Kevin G. Anderson" <kg*****@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:11********************@j55g2000cwa.googlegrou ps.com...

What: CAUG Meeting - QuickBooks IIF Files; Total Access Analyzer; CAUG
Social
When: Thursday, May 25, 2006, 6PM
Who: Chris Monaghan and Kevin Anderson

As strongly as I believe in User Groups, and as good a reputation as CAUG
has, I have to point out the FAQ for this newsgroup,
http://www.mvps.org/access/netiquette.htm which contains the charter, which
does not specifically permit advertising, and the request that you not
advertise anything, even free stuff. Thanks for your consideration in the
future.

Larry,

This is the first complaint I've gotten. I've been posting our meeting
announcements since March, so I suspect the problem is that this time
I'm one of the presenters. If so, then I'd be happy to leave my
name/bio off next time. Since I don't link to a website or give a
business email address, I have a hard time seeing how this is
advertising. Nevertheless, diligent policing of these things by you
and many others has preserved the usability of CDMA over the years, so
I can respect that.

And while I certainly don't want to damage CAUG's reputation, we've had
people attend based on seeing the announcements here, so I think it's
important to keep posting them in some form or another. Heck, I'd like
to see other Access UG's posting their announcements - it would be
reassuring to know who's still meeting, and what they're doing. As
another recent post discussed, Access is facing stiff competition
nowadays for user/developer attention, and the volume of CDMA postings
has fallen. My position is that monthly posts like this cannot hurt.

I'd be happy to take this discussion off-line. You'll find my email
address in the header (yours - contrary to RFC 1036 rules for Usenet -
is nowhere to be found;)

Cheers,
Kevin

[Randy Harris]

Kevin, for what it's worth, I think we are all a bit sensitive in CDMA
because of the flagrant abuse by one individual. I suspect that Larry's
post was in hope that particular miscreant would not be encouraged by
your posting. In my opinion there is no similarity between your post
and the persistent advertising by that person and there is no reason
that you shouldn't continue to post such announcements.

Just my 2 cents worth,

--
Randy Harris
tech at promail dot com
I'm pretty sure I know everything that I can remember.

[CDMAPoster]

Kevin G. Anderson wrote:

Larry Linson wrote:

"Kevin G. Anderson" <kg*****@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:11********************@j55g2000cwa.googlegrou ps.com...

What: CAUG Meeting - QuickBooks IIF Files; Total Access Analyzer; CAUG
Social
When: Thursday, May 25, 2006, 6PM
Who: Chris Monaghan and Kevin Anderson

As strongly as I believe in User Groups, and as good a reputation as CAUG
has, I have to point out the FAQ for this newsgroup,
http://www.mvps.org/access/netiquette.htm which contains the charter, which
does not specifically permit advertising, and the request that you not
advertise anything, even free stuff. Thanks for your consideration in the
future.

Larry,

This is the first complaint I've gotten. I've been posting our meeting
announcements since March, so I suspect the problem is that this time
I'm one of the presenters. If so, then I'd be happy to leave my
name/bio off next time. Since I don't link to a website or give a
business email address, I have a hard time seeing how this is
advertising. Nevertheless, diligent policing of these things by you
and many others has preserved the usability of CDMA over the years, so
I can respect that.

And while I certainly don't want to damage CAUG's reputation, we've had
people attend based on seeing the announcements here, so I think it's
important to keep posting them in some form or another. Heck, I'd like
to see other Access UG's posting their announcements - it would be
reassuring to know who's still meeting, and what they're doing. As
another recent post discussed, Access is facing stiff competition
nowadays for user/developer attention, and the volume of CDMA postings
has fallen. My position is that monthly posts like this cannot hurt.

I'd be happy to take this discussion off-line. You'll find my email
address in the header (yours - contrary to RFC 1036 rules for Usenet -
is nowhere to be found;)

Cheers,
Kevin

I propose a solution. Not only does CAUG have a website, they have a
webpage with info on upcoming meetings.

Although I appreciated the extra detail in the CDMA posting, the
webpage seems to convey most of what is to be covered at the next
meeting. When the time of a meeting nears, a post can be made here
such as:

Upcoming Chicago Access Users Group meeting:
http://www.caug.com/meetings.asp

AFAICS, this should satisfy the valid objections posted without
conveying the false impression that Access User Group info is not
desirable in CDMA. In addition, ironically, the Partners and
Consultants links on the CAUG site get free advertising by doing this.

James A. Fortune
CD********@FortuneJames.com

Access has supported "Lookup Fields" for several versions and has added
power to the feature for Access 12 by allowing for multi-valued
lookups. ... This is simply good database practice (normalized data,
joined on unique identifiers), but made easy enough for non-developers.
.... Access 12 extends the lookup concept by enabling multi-valued
lookups. Where a lookup is really just a join made easy, a
multi-valued lookup is simply a many-to-many join made easy. -- Erik
Rucker's Access Blog

Groan.

[Tim Marshall]

David W. Fenton wrote:

If the charter prohibits announcements of Access user group
meetings, then the charter definitely needs to be revised.

I second that. Not to trash Larry, though, it's sometimes a hard call.

--
Tim http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~tmarshal/
^o<
/#) "Burp-beep, burp-beep, burp-beep?" - Quaker Jake
/^^ "Whatcha doin?" - Ditto "TIM-MAY!!" - Me

[Larry Linson]

"Kevin G. Anderson" <kg*****@pobox.com> wrote

I'd be happy to take this discussion off-line.
You'll find my email address in the header
(yours - contrary to RFC 1036 rules for Usenet -
is nowhere to be found;)

No more discussion is necessary; the subject has been covered. For David's
benefit, I will add that long user group announcements and other, even
Access-related, announcements have always been discouraged here, and it was
not always I who had to politely admonish the posters.

I think you'd be well-advised to at least "munge" the address in your
header. Mine's no longer there because I posted my actual e-mail for years,
until the virus and worm writers figured out that archived newsgroup posts
were as fertile a field as e-mail when they infected someone's machine. I
ended up getting between 1.5 and 5 MB per day of a combination of virus- and
worm-infected e-mail, along with the normal complement of spam at that
address. Fortunately, the postmaster disabled it and gave me a different
one.

I can be found, if anyone is that interested. But don't seek me out planning
to to debate USENET rules and the charter.

Matter of fact, I think perhaps some "kind soul" has posted one of my
e-mails where the spammers can harvest it, as I've suddenly experienced
about a 5-fold increase in spam at that address. Fortunately, that
particular address is behind a really good spam filter, so it's only a
burden on the site, not on me personally.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

[Kevin G. Anderson]

Larry Linson wrote:

"Kevin G. Anderson" <kg*****@pobox.com> wrote

> I'd be happy to take this discussion off-line.
> You'll find my email address in the header
> (yours - contrary to RFC 1036 rules for Usenet -
> is nowhere to be found;)

No more discussion is necessary; the subject has been covered. For David's
benefit, I will add that long user group announcements and other, even
Access-related, announcements have always been discouraged here, and it was
not always I who had to politely admonish the posters.

I think you'd be well-advised to at least "munge" the address in your
header. Mine's no longer there because I posted my actual e-mail for years,
until the virus and worm writers figured out that archived newsgroup posts
were as fertile a field as e-mail when they infected someone's machine. I
ended up getting between 1.5 and 5 MB per day of a combination of virus- and
worm-infected e-mail, along with the normal complement of spam at that
address. Fortunately, the postmaster disabled it and gave me a different
one.

I can be found, if anyone is that interested. But don't seek me out planning
to to debate USENET rules and the charter.

Matter of fact, I think perhaps some "kind soul" has posted one of my
e-mails where the spammers can harvest it, as I've suddenly experienced
about a 5-fold increase in spam at that address. Fortunately, that
particular address is behind a really good spam filter, so it's only a
burden on the site, not on me personally.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

I don't want a debate, I just want to find a protocol for posting
Access users group announcements that you won't find objectionable.
Per James' suggestion, I can replace the details and speaker bio with a
link to the website. Would that pass muster?

[David W. Fenton]

"Larry Linson" <bo*****@localhost.not> wrote in
news:G1wdg.9916$qn2.32@trnddc04:

Matter of fact, I think perhaps some "kind soul" has posted one of
my e-mails where the spammers can harvest it, as I've suddenly
experienced about a 5-fold increase in spam at that address.

I've migrated all my email to a new domain, and with the exception
one new email address, have received no spam there.

For the first few months after I switched, the spam to the old
addresses dropped markedly, but in the last two weeks, it's shot up
again. I don't know if perhaps my old email addresses have been
republished somewhere or not. I do know that it's hopeless to ever
get rid of all the references to the old addresses, as they are
deeply embedded in all sorts of places indexed by Google (and thus
available to anyone).

I really am not pleased by the number of websites that are now
republishing Usenet groups. I don't want the things I post here in
this newsgroup to be in the regular Google web index, but much of it
is showing up there now. The other thing that's very annoying is
these websites that republish the posts of private mailing lists.
One that I'm on (for the Finale music notation program) is being
republished on two different web sites, so all of that stuff is now
in the Google web index. It's not that I am ashamed of anything I've
posted in any of these forums, it's just that I posted to narrow
audiences but now the posts are being republished to a wider
audience to whom I wasn't speaking.

Fortunately, I munged my email address on Usenet a long time again,
and the mailing list republication sites don't reveal the email
addresses, so it's not really a spam threat. It just strikes me as a
form of minor dishonesty, a violation of the terms under which I
believed I was making my posts. Of course, in reality, I knew I was
posting in a public venue, so I had no assurance of any kind of
privacy or limitation of distribution. It's just that I had become
accustomed to a decade or so of things being one way, and now the
terms have been changed by people who are piggybacking on the
content I'm creating.

It rankles.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

[CDMAPoster]

Kevin G. Anderson wrote:

I don't want a debate, I just want to find a protocol for posting
Access users group announcements that you won't find objectionable.
Per James' suggestion, I can replace the details and speaker bio with a
link to the website. Would that pass muster?

Here is part of the basis for my suggestion:

In:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp....a1e7b5afdda05f

Larry Linson quotes from the charter:

"The following are specifically forbidden in the CDMA newsgroup:

- Advertising of any kind, even if the product is free, a demo, or
otherwise. You may answer a question with a link to a commercial site
which pertains to the question. You may also add a phrase and/or link
in your signature.

....

Here is part of my reasoning:

The link has to be clicked on to be seen. In addition, a caption for
the link lets the user know what will be found there. In this
particular case, any advertising on the website also requires a further
request by the user to be seen.

But the votes that count the most here are the ones by those who
object. Note that it has been stated many times here that diligent
adherence to that paragraph would satisfy most, if not all, objections
to PC Datasheet's use of blatant advertising phrases in the body of his
posts. No one seems to mind a link to a website containing the same
blatant advertising phrases, especially if it relates to Access. I
await comments by Larry and PC Datasheet.

James A. Fortune
CD********@FortuneJames.com

I wonder what cosmic event will happen when the 'whoissteve' visited
number catches up with the 'asked for help' number. Perhaps it then
signifies the number of users who will click on any random link when
asked :-).