vb to msaccess dde communications a couple of weeks ago i posted a question concerning communicating between vb and msaccess using dde the answers i received at that time allowed me to get a prototype of my project working however during this process i have come up with new problems there seems to be a limit of characters for a dde topic string is this inherent in all dde systems or just peculiar to msaccess or vb it is easy to query an access database from vb using the dde sql command provided the above limitation is overcome by using short field and table names but how is one meant to update a database a a dde sql update command does not seem to work b initiating an access macro using a dde execute command from vb cannot be used because when the macro requests information from vb using a second dde channel the programs dead lock until time outs occur the vb to access channel has to close before the access to vb channel is initiated i guess c access does not allow vb to dde poke the information the way i eventually managed to update a database was by sending key strokes from vb to access using the sendkeys command this technique has the problem that access cannot be minimised and it must always be in a state ready to respond to the sequence of key strokes vb sends are all the above statements correct or have i made incorrect assumptions are there any better work arounds to the above are there any signs of an odbc driver for access bob ran doc ic ac uk
