Seeing VBA code in MS Access

One of my office system is still underpinned by MS Access. It is an old system which works well enough, but each year needs to be manually updated... "rolled over", if you will. 

However, this year as I was updating, I found myself unable to remember how to bring up the visual basic code (VBA) pane to review and update the underlying code and functions within the database forms. I was sure that there was a very easy way to do this - i.e. a set of hot key strokes - but for the life of me, I could not remember what they were. 

A protracted online search (largely because I could also not recall the appropriate terminology!) finally yielded me the short keys, which I will repeat here for anyone else finding themselves in this position: 

Alt +F11

Thank you to SpookiePower for asking the question, way back in 2012. Keying this will USUALLY bring up a separate VBA pane, where we can amend the underlying code. 

However, I have noted that the shortcut keys sometimes don't work; which is puzzling. As cover, I have also added in the VBA icon shown above as a custom icon in the header bar.  

Sam

References:

SpookiePower. (2012, February 11). Where to see the VBA code behind the form?. https://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/threads/where-to-see-the-vba-code-behind-the-form.221754/

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Impartiality and career development

When we are working with our career development clients, we need to ensure 'impartiality'. The CDANZ Code of Ethics, by which all members are bound (whether we are Fellows of the organisation, or the newest subscriber member) states that we must:

"Disclose all known and potential conflicts of interest before they arise. Members shall only proceed with the service if they are satisfied that the conflict, or perception of conflict, will not impair the member’s impartiality and independence" (CDANZ, 2016).

So what does 'impartiality' actually mean? The Oxford English Dictionary states it is "The quality or character of being impartial; freedom from prejudice or bias; fairness" (Simpson & Weiner, 1989, p. 700). We could say then that impartiality is our ability to NOT have skin in the game, and to reduce our own biases as much as we can. While we can never remove biases, we can acknowledge them, then do our best to step away from our known biases (our "bias through ignorance"; Mullane & Williams, 2013). 

It is essential that career practitioners do not take a view either way of what our clients' decisions will be; that we all our client decisions to be client decisions. We must accept that our role is that of the impartial observer in assisting our client to the best of our professional ability. We must - as a career professional - hold up a 'reality' mirror so the client can see the likely ramifications of their decisions. 

There are apparently three aspects to impartiality; those of "institutional independence, outcome neutrality, and political neutrality" (Hooley, 2023, p. 41), where our organisations need to be objective, the outcomes need to be objective, and politics too needs to be out of the loop. Further, we need to ensure that our client relationships do not become too complex, so undermining the benefits of our time together (Crocket, 2011). Complexity intersects with impartiality in the following example of institutional independence, where as career professionals, we may be employed by a University, and providing post-graduate advice to an undergraduate. As a result, we may need "to operate in ways [which] serve[... the best] interests of [our] clients, but which may not serve the short-term interests of [our] employers" (Hooley, 2023, p. 42). 

Where we can run into trouble with outcome neutrality is by having "preconceptions about what [is] the best or right outcome for an individual" (Hooley, 2023, p. 45); we step back into our own biases and have an 'opinion' instead of using our developmental skills to allow the client to self-determine; to be autonomous. 

Lastly, political neutrality can be compromised when we "take sides in relation to political, environmental, economic or ethical controversies" (Hooley, 2023, p. 45). While similar to outcome neutrality, this particular impartiality boundary is where we run afoul of our own 'sacred cows'. For example, if we are an evangelical greenie, we may see all issues as being related to climate change. And that too is to be avoided. 

As career professionals, it is our role to work towards the client reaching "the best possible outcome", not "sublimating such outcomes to the interests of institutions or outside agendas" (Hooley, 2023, p. 45). Nicely said.

Let's be careful out there.

Sam

References:

CDANZ. (2016). Code of Ethics. Career Development Association of New Zealand.  http://www.cdanz.org.nz/uploads/CDANZ_CoE_Word%20English%20Final.pdf

Crocket, K. (2011). Multiple Relationships. In K. Crocket, M. Agee, & S. Cornforth (Eds.), Ethics in practice: A guide for counsellors (pp. 127-131). Dunmore Publishing.

Hooley, T. (2023). Impartiality: A critical review. Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling (NICEC), 50(1), 41-53. https://doi.org/10.20856/jnicec.5005

Mullane, K. & Williams, M. (2013, September 17). Bias in research: the rule rather than the exception? Retrieved from https://www.elsevier.com/editors-update/story/publishing-ethics/bias-in-research-the-rule-rather-than-the-exception

Simpson, J. A., & Weiner, E. S. C. (Eds.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., Vol VI Hat-Intervacuum). Clarendon Press.

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New Blogger and non-breaking spaces

It is interesting, isn't it, how difficult it is to get used to a new system. Google's Blogger website structure has just been updated, and all we users are rattling around like ants in a can, complaining and trying to make the new system work like the old one.

And asking questions about why the new system doesn't work like the old one. And trying to post questions about why the new system doesn't work like the old one. And asking to get the legacy viewer back so we can pretend that we still have the old one. We don't like change.

But every now and again we strike a problem in a new system which may actually be a bug. I had an interesting one recently. Blogger kept putting in what is known as a 'non-breaking space' which meant that my paragraphs broke in funny places. You can only see this is the html view, where a non-breaking space instruction looks like this:

 

It usually occurred when I inserted a URL. So instead of a paragraph reading properly, it would break before the URL, like this:

James went to the gym on Mondays and Fridays

(https://www.google.co.nz/)

If I deleted the " ", it would just appear again. It was doing my head in. Once I found out how to ask for help from the Google Community (another story, here), I asked for help to get rid of the recurring " " code.

Having worked my way through everything, I proudly looked at my post on the Google Community. It was then that I realised that there were two pieces of tht non-breaking space code bracketing the URL. Oops. I had only got rid of one: of course Blogger was thinking I was useless, and adding the open code element back in. Like book-ends, there are always two.

I got rid of both pieces and the problem went away... and I had a warm wash of shame for not having thought of that myself.

Sam

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Asking the Google Community

Google's Blogger website platform has at long last been updated, and we users are struggling with the changes. Luckily the users have an expert group - the Google Community - who collectively provide expert guidance for the questions.

I went around and around recently on the Google Community site, trying to find out how to "Create new" or "Compose" a new post. The interesting thing is that, to find out how to ask the Google Community how to create a post to ask a question, I had to go to Google and post "how to ask a NEW question of the blogger community".

Interesting.

The foremost post which came up was an answer to a spam Google Community post which ended up with an aside explaining how to another user how create a new post. We go to this link here (Google Support, 2020; Google Support, 2019), and fill out the form.

Perhaps a simple link in the header bar of the site had not occurred to anyone.

Sam

References:

• Google Support (4 June 2019). Ask me questions. https://support.google.com/blogger/thread/7313037?hl=en
• Google Support (2020). Ask the Community. https://support.google.com/blogger/thread/new?hl=en

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Creating Jump Links in Blogger

Crikey. You would think it would be a simple thing to work out how to create an anchor jump link on a single l-o-n-g Blogger page or blog post, so users could skip to the bit that was the most relevant to them. But no. It actually took me quite a while to find out how to do it.

I am not a techno-whizz at coding. I muddle through by trial and error, and always have a crack at coding in a Word document, where each change gets saved as a new version, so I can roll back when everything goes pear-shaped (as it often does. Version control rules!).

However, when I wanted to create some single page jump links, I thought it would be a relatively simple thing to do a google search and get an answer. However, I think I had five failed attempts before I finally found the 'right' way to get this working.

Luckily I was using Word so that I could roll back the changes I had made each time I tried and failed to get this working.

And, because it was so hard to get code that would actually work the way it was supposed to on a Blogger blog, I thought I would repeat it here for anyone else who was looking for the same thing.

So you need four things before you start:

1. Know where you want to locate your jump links (ie, your table of contents)
2. Choose a simple one word name for that particular jump link
3. Know where the headings are that you want to link to
4. Have working code for your heading.

What was proposed for the jump link itself was:

<a href="#Yellow">Light Yellow: Report/article FAQs</a>

What was proposed for the heading to be linked to was:

<a name="Yellow">Report/article FAQs</a>

What the jump link ended up looking like was (because it was a bullet point, and I wanted a particular phrase, and there was background highlighter, and there was a specified font):

<li><span quot="" sans-serif="" verdana=""><span style="background-color: #ffff99;"><a href="#Yellow"><a href="#Yellow">Light Yellow: Report/article FAQs</a></a></span></span></li>

And what the heading looked like (because a particular font, heading and background highlighter format) was:

<a name="Yellow"><span quot="" sans-serif="" verdana=""><span style="background-color: #ffff99;">Report/article FAQs</a></span></span></h3>

Hope that helps you work a solution out for yourself!


Sam

• Reference: Minaz ArtGirl (17 March 2017). HOW TO create anchor jump links within same page on BLOGGER successfully. Retrieved 29 April 2017 from https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/blogger/TyLa_ajCtBA;context-place=topicsearchin/blogger/How$20do$20I$20create$20same$20page$20anchors$3F

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