One of the most important thing for a developer are resources to learn from.  Whenever we start any development, especially for some new aspect, we do some form of research about available methods/properties…

Personally, I like to start of by trying to use Microsoft’s help.  You know, place my cursor on a method/property and press F1 to get Access to redirect my browser to the appropriate support article.

Yes, this can be very hit or miss:

• The famous “Keyword not found” page!
• Redirected to generic landing page
• Redirected to the improper pages altogether that have nothing to do with the searched term
• Even when you do get to the proper page, little to no content on the subject is to be found

but most of the time you can a good starting point.

This is why it is so important that Microsoft keep their documentation up-to-date!

As part of my recent article

Constraints in Microsoft Access

Were you aware that Microsoft Access ‘supports‘ applying constraints? Here’s what you need to know! Things of Note Regarding Microsoft Access Constraints Before diving into examples, I think it is best to talk about some of the particularities of Access constraints.

I explorer retrieving the Constraint definitions via VBA.  For this I discovered there was a table level property, CheckConstraints, that housed such info.  So I created code like:

CurrentDb.TableDefs("MyTableName").Properties("CheckConstraints").Value

Through this process, I discovered several other properties I had never heard of either.  So I decided to check out the formal help on the subject, so I selected the Properties terms and pressed F1.

Well, things didn’t start off to well as I was directed to:

Using MS365

which had nothing to do with the search term, at all!  Thus I turned to my tried, tested and true Access 2013.

Using Access 2013

which wasn’t much better I must say!

However, I could at least redirect myself manually and get to the TableDef.Properties property using the side menu which eventually brought me to:

From this page I could see a listing of available properties:

• TableDef.Attributes property (DAO)
• TableDef.ConflictTable property (DAO)
• TableDef.Connect property (DAO)
• TableDef.DateCreated property (DAO)
• TableDef.Fields property (DAO)
• TableDef.Indexes property (DAO)
• TableDef.LastUpdated property (DAO)
• TableDef.Name property (DAO)
• TableDef.Properties property (DAO)
• TableDef.RecordCount property (DAO)
• TableDef.ReplicaFilter property (DAO)
• TableDef.SourceTableName property (DAO)
• TableDef.Updatable property (DAO)
• TableDef.ValidationRule property (DAO)
• TableDef.ValidationText property (DAO)

No CheckConstraints in the lsiting?

Then, I checked a few other properties I was seeing while exploring all of this and none were listed either.  Things like:

• Orientation
• OrderByOnFalse
• NameMap
• DefaultView
• DisplayViewsOnSharePointSite
• TotalsRowFalse
• FilterOnLoad
• OrderByOnLoad
• HideNewField
• and many, many more

Then, I examined the article date “09/14/2021”, so it was relatively up-to-date, yet the page only lists Access 2013, Office 2013?  No 2016, 2019, 2021, MS365????!

So Microsoft, you need to do better, a lot better!

More importantly, we deserve better from you!

Developers count on documentation.  Features should not be released until a minimal amount of documentation provided.

As such, I’ve created a new Feedback Portal item to ask the Microsoft Access Dev Team to add the missing properties to the support documentation.  So feel free to add your support to the suggestion by simply up-voting it.  You can access the item at:

Also, if you are aware of other missing help subject, leave note of them by leaving a comment on that feedback item. Let’s make it an on-going item that hopefully one day they will address.

If we can get Microsoft to slowly clean up and complete their documentation it will be beneficial to all! Best it costs you nothing more that a click of a button. So, please take 10 seconds of your day and up-vote the feedback item.

Hey Microsoft, as mentioned above, your help redirection routine needs some serious love and attention!

For those of you wondering why I didn’t also create another Feedback Portal item for the flawed help redirection, I have directly mentioned this to the Dev Team multiple, multiple times, with screenshots, and have given up flagging the issue anymore.