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    ajetrumpet is offline VIP
    Windows Vista Access 2007
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    Guidance on searching MS and Forums for Answers

    OK guys,

    I'm sure a lot of you newcomers don't know this kind of stuff, so here's to helping you not waste your time searching for answers to your tech questions!

    Nowadays, in order to keep revenue flowing (at least to pay for web hosting), forums are integrated and can easily duplicate their threads elsewhere and become extremely redundant when you're searching google.

    Take this page from MS for example:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...ffice.10).aspx

    If you search MS Access VBA help for Converting DAO Code to ADO and click on the first result page, you'll get the exact same page as the MSDN webpage referenced above, verbatim for words and format both.

    Now take another page about input masks from another MS domain:

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ac...010096452.aspx

    If you search for input mask in MS Access help (not VBA help) and click on the first result page, it's also verbatim for words and format as the above link.

    This happens all the time. For MS, a couple general rules can be followed because they're almost always true:

    1) MS Office VBA help files are duplicated on the MSDN website. Obviously there is more content on MSDN, but in general, what you can find on MSDN for specific Office programs, you can find in the program itself if you just search it.

    2) MS Office general help files are duplicated on http://office.microsoft.com. The same rule applies here as above, but for general help files in office programs.

    And sometimes, the duplication is tripled. e.g. - you can see the same thing in all 3 places that I've already mentioned. So in general, MS pages aren't really helpful because it's more or less just a bunch of redundant data sitting on the servers.

    And searching google sometimes gets even worse. This is one website to definitely stay away from:

    http://www.bigresource.com/

    You can spend an insane amount of time there and never find anything. And one of the reasons is probably because it pulls information from all over the web. And because of that, and the fact that almost every question out there has been asked a million times and been given a million different answers, finding something there that you'll be able to relate to is next to impossible (unless you know exactly what you're looking for).

    Personally, I can scan a forum thread with 20 or so posts in about 30 seconds to see if it has information that's even close to being relevant for my purposes. But the majority of people seeking help aren't even close to being that fast because they're learning quite a bit AS they're searching.

    The other thing that you need to know about searching is that, for a multitude of reasons, large companies are not helpful at all. The most significant reasons that I've noticed as to why they're not are:

    • People are not simplistic (and therefore can't give simple answers) because they work in a bureaucratic environment.
    • People have no idea how to relate to common sense questions because they're piece number 'X' in an organization that has 5 million pieces.
    • They don't really care about people that are learning stuff that was created years (and sometimes decades) ago.




    A good example of the 3rd bullet point would be the 'higher ups' at MS. They could care less about people needing help in Access for a few reasons...

    1) The software is not cutting edge and it'll be superseded by something else very soon
    2) It's boring because it's not complex and/or flashy (think ASP.NET, VS 2010, etc..), and
    3) They've hired people from all over the world (many from foreign countries) to do the dirty work of answering questions on forums like this one:

    http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/For...-US/categories

    That's a perfect example of the place to go if you have a stake in MS or can make money by talking to their people. Otherwise, it's probably not the place to find simple answers. And sometimes not even good ones!

    If you're somebody just starting out or want simple answers because you're running a small business or something like that, places like the following websites are good spots to get answers with minimal amounts of search time (if you search using the right terms):



    The forums above are part of the small minority of them out there that actually have a lot of activity (not just traffic). Those are the ones you want, because people still hang out there. Forums like this one are OK, but they don't have near the activity as the ones in the above list do. So for asking questions, (recent) activity and traffic is the thing to look for.

    Also, Access has some extremely beneficial help files to look at, which can probably help you more than asking a redundant question on a forum like this one. Below is a short list of search terms that will yield the beneficial articles I'm talking about (they will usually be the first article in the return list):

    • input mask - All the information you want to know about data masking
    • functions - A list of all internal functions Access has, sorted by category
    • VBE Glossary - almost everything you want to know about coding in VBA. Definitions mostly.


    Happy searching!
    Last edited by ajetrumpet; 08-24-2011 at 06:04 PM.

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