Getting Ready for Distribution

Now that your add-in is tested and debugged, a final development phase is needed. In this phase you clean up your add-in and add extra functionality by using Help files.

Cleaning Up Your Add-in

There are several things you can do to clean up your add-in:

• Delete any temporary or unnecessary objects in your add-in. Then, perform one more test pass on your add-in to make sure you didn’t delete a necessary object.
• Repair and compact the database.
• Change the file name extension of your add-in. By convention, add-ins have a .mda file name extension, not the standard Microsoft Access .mdb file name extension. This enables you to easily differentiate add-ins from regular databases. It also keeps the database name out of dialog boxes the user normally sees in Microsoft Access, such as the Open dialog box. Changing the file name extension of the database file has no effect on the operation and behavior of the database; it’s simply a technique to aid in file management at the MS-DOS file level.

Important Make sure to compile and save all Visual Basic modules in your add-in, including form and report modules, before distributing your application. Users may encounter unexpected errors in add-in modules that haven’t been compiled and saved.

Creating a Help File

Help is a feature that can make your add-in easier to use and can reduce the amount of printed documentation you supply for your add-in. You can create Help files by using the Microsoft Help Compiler, which you can obtain from the following sources:

• Microsoft Office 97, Developer Edition
• Microsoft Visual C++
• Microsoft Visual Basic
• Microsoft Developer’s Network

Help topics are called from your add-in’s forms in the same way they are called from any Microsoft Access application’s forms.

See Also   For more information on creating Help files, search the Help index for “Help, creating custom” and “HelpFile property.”