15.1. Sharing Information Is a Two-Way Street

When sharing information between multiple Microsoft Office programs, you can write code two ways. The first way is to write the code within Access to push the data into the other Office programs. The second way is to write code within those other programs to pull code from Access into the other program. This two-way street works for Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Because this is an Access 2003 VBA book, we'll spend more time covering the push direction, but don't worry, we'll provide examples of the pull direction as well. Many of the examples in this chapter are based on an Inventory Control application for pallets of material from a manufacturing plant. The sample database with a large amount of the code discussed here is available. Our Inventory Control application launches with the switchboard shown in Figure 15-1.

Figure 15.1. Figure 15-1

The application allows users to receive new material into a particular location, move material from one location to another, allocate material to a particular order, and consume material against a particular order. All of these tasks are easily performed with Access. A series of forms, reports, and queries allow users to accomplish all of these tasks quickly, without leaving the application. However, there are a number of advanced tasks that require other components of Microsoft Office. Outlook, Word, and Excel are all used to enhance this Inventory Control application.