If you recently installed Internet Explorer 7 you may have started seeing the following error message when opening up Microsoft Access files:

“Microsoft Access cannot open this file. This file is located outside of your intranet or on an untrusted site.”

You can make this go away by opening up IE 7 and going to “Internet Options” under the “Tools” menu. Go to the “Security” tab and select “Local Intranet” then hit the “Sites” button. Uncheck the box marked “Automatically detect intranet network.” Apply the new settings and your Access database should open without problems.

I’m working on a project for a new client with a dropdown menu that sits right above a small Flash slideshow. The slideshow, powered by the excellent SlideShow Pro by the way, causes any elements that try to display on top of it to be overlapped. This is a problem with all Flash objects and the solutions for fixing it are varied and all too complex.

It turns out the easiest and simplest solution is to add this parameter to your object: wmode=”transparent”

Of course, your mileage may vary with this but it’s been working for me so far.