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The Microsoft Access user interface shares many elements with the user interfaces of the other Office applications, and it's relatively easy to transfer data between Access and the other Office components. In addition, Access can be integrated with the other Office components in custom applications, which allows you to combine the strengths of a database package with the familiar and friendly environment of word processor and spreadsheet programs.
This chapter explains how to programmatically integrate Access 2003 with the other Office 2003 applications using built-in Access features. For instance, your applications can tap installable indexed sequential access method (ISAM) drivers through the Connection object to work with the data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. A Connection object based on an ISAM driver can serve as a two-way data-sharing channel between Access and Excel. An ISAM driver also enables Access developers to build solutions that retrieve data from Microsoft Outlook.
Furthermore, you can tap Access data sources programmatically with the Microsoft Word mail merge capability to facilitate creation of mailing labels, form letters, and product catalogs. Developers familiar with programming conventions for Word's rich formatting options can employ Word as a reporting vehicle for data otherwise managed by Access.
Using Automation, your applications can exploit the object model from one application with a solution created in another application. Access developers can take advantage of Automation and extend the capabilities of their solutions by tapping the object model of other Office packages. For example, an Access application can export names and addresses from an Access data store to an Outlook Contacts folder. Similarly, you can populate values to tables in a Word document from an Access data source. The samples in this chapter focus on the interoperability of Access with Excel, Outlook, and Word, but the general principles extend to Office applications as well as third-party packages that expose their object models through Automation and that enable manipulation using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
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