Tablet PC & Access (Any)

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I’m considering the purchase of a tablet PC and would like to use the tablet features with an existing Access application. I’ve searched thru the Microsoft site and can’t find any mention of Access (as usual) in their typical Office suite. Since Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc are offered in MS Office XP Tablet and, evidently, work I would have thought an upgrade to Office XP Professional Tablet (if there is such a thing??) would make Access available. With the dropdowns, auto-fills, checkboxes, etc I thought it would be the most sought after program to interface with the stylus. Of course, I thought my application would convert to Windows CE, also, but that’s another story.

Can Access forms be used with the tablet? Is there a tablet version of Access? Has anyone used it? I would love some input/advice on this topic.

Kathi
Birmingham, AL

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I found This at MS Office which is of course not very informative, although it more than suggests that it does work. I am using Office 2003 Beta with a Wacom Tablet with the handwriting recognition features turned on, a poor man’s tablet, and I had no problem opening up Access 2003 and filling in info using the Wacom pen, which leads me to believe that it would work fine with a tablet. I do agree that MS left out any mention of Access in the Tablet PC download pack, but I think it will work.
I’ll post a question at the Office 2003 beta Access newsgroup and see if I can get you some more info. (PS if you’re going to spring for a Tablet, get 2003 to go with it. It’s a winner!!! Should be out by September – Woody says Aug. 20)

kip

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Kip,

Thanks for your efforts. I had found the same article that you did, but even after rereading it I’m still not sure it says that he’s still using Access with the tablet. “Once bitten, twice shy” I guess since I was told I was going to be able to do the same thing with WindowsCE version. I’m excited to hear your rave about Office 2003. Since all the tablets being shipped now are XP, I’ll wait until 2003 comes out — heck, the price will have gone down by then anyways, right?

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I found these snippets of a thread in the newsgroups at msnews.public.windows.tabletpc. Does this clarify or confuse?
ps the “write anywhere” functionality is what I am using as part of 2003. Sounds like it’s available in Office XP as well. You need to turn on the language bar and handwriting recognition in add/remove programs (change Office). It’s a little convoluted but there’s help in Office Help

kip

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The current state of the Tablet PC is that in order to hand write into text
boxes etc, the application developers need to specifically support that. For
example, I can write an app here that presents a form that you can write all
over, but that doesn’t mean every app works the same way. Access for example
does not support this type of functionality.

The only way you can use handwriting to enter data into an Access form is to
use the Tablet PC’s input panel which you can pop up from the bottom of the
screen.

I would expect this situation to change over time though as Tablets mature.

Hope that helps,

Pete

—
Peter Wright
Author of ADO.NET Novice To Pro, from Apress Inc.

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I am trying to do the same thing, and actually have found that direct
entry is no big deal with the standard Office XP & Tablet. I am a
newbie at this, but have been following the threads quite a bit.

I have taken an access form (from Access 97 actually), and on my new
Tablet PC (less than a day out of the box), I can hand-write entries
right in the open form location. I turn on the tablet “write
anywhere” feature and I can scrawl the data across the page. I will
need to tweak my forms to make them more readible in the field, but I
don’t know if there is much else I need to do. There will be a
“training period” for the user to get adept at entry, though, as it is
a bit quirky.

I am I missing something even easier for data collection?

Dan

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