What I would like to see for this forum:

I think many would agree that the most important aspect and/or benefit of this forum is the education aspect. Education as in the concept of helping others learn the craft. The passing on of the hard earned/learned secrets of Access development.

I think I can speak for many beginners (of which I consider myself) when I say I think there is a need for more educational references. References such as a section for complete details educating those who care to read a little about various subjects that are posted as questions frequently in the forum. I see a lot of great code on this forum that could be utilized by more non-experienced users if it would only contain more ‘comments, and or references to its use. Many of the responses I have seen seem to do a great job at addressing the posters immediate question, but do little to educate the beginner who is reading also. I am amazed at the number of Views posts get. I would suggest that many of these Views are people like myself that are trying to learn from the situations and answers that others are asking for help on. I know I read many many threads just looking for concepts and or useful ideas that I can adapt to my personal situation. Without the general implementation concepts and instructions many of these posts only benefit the poster.

I would like to see a comprehensive resource area explaining some of the more commonly used aspects of Access. The “secrets” if you will of the experienced developers. I think that if there were an area that not only listed code or code concepts, but an explanation of how to implement such and/or its likely uses, explained in beginner format, you could both educate and limit repetitive questions, or at lease shorten the response necessary by pointing to the referenced material.

I will use myself as an example… recently I posted a question to the forum regarding security in the form of a Logon ID routine. I searched the previous threads using the search function, however although I was able to find many posts regarding the function, I was unable to find one that talked me through implementation of the function, at least not at my experience level. By the number of posts on this subject it appears to be a frequently discussed topic yet no one thread covered the complete topic such that I was able to get it working. Yes, there were several different code modules available, and I came to find out that the one I chose to implement needed work (of which I was incapable of doing, not knowing VBA yet). I figured that if it was posted as a solution to a question/problem, it must be right. I saw many posts indicating and urging the use of the API function, however my experience level prohibited me from implementing that one due to no detailed instructions included. I would have liked to see a “security” link pointing to an article which contained specific instructions to implement the function, including where to put the code, how to call it, how to make it work on a form. Some may hold an opinion that if detailed instructions are necessary, the user would need to go back to class, however I have seen questions posted on the forum that indicate no matter the experience level, sometimes detailed instructions are necessary. After all, isn’t experience level relative? Wasn’t everyone an inexperienced user at some point? There is always someone who knows more.

There are many more concepts that I think could be better explained in a base document format. Having base documents, I feel, would lessen the load of the ones who I see frequently answering the same questions over and over, and the document could be vetted as useful and accurate. A compressive base document on the various subjects (including the use and design of VBA code) would be extremely helpful. If a more experienced user did not need the level of detail given, they could simply skim over such, however low level detail would be extremely helpful to educate the inexperienced user. Simply making references to previous posts, which in my opinion many times lack specificity, are of little use to the inexperienced user, and do not benefit the “Viewers”.

Just my 2-cents, from an inexperienced user. I hope other inexperienced users (perhaps the 275 who have viewed this thread) would submit their views also.