I was having a discussion with fellow MVPs regarding the Linked Table Manager and its limitations and how IMHO Access truly hasn’t evolved in a long, long time.

Fellow MVP, Luke Chung, kindly enumerated a few improvements in recent versions, such as:

• Reports to PDF
• Totals row on datasheets
• Filtering UI at the field and field header level including multi-value selects
• Filterable Report View
• Control anchoring/resizing in form design
• Tabbed views
• Navigation Pane
• Search bar (Navigation Pane)
• Date picker
• Image controls with control source

 

My thoughts on the subject

It’s just that many improvements I find were possible long before it was incorporated by Microsoft, so I didn’t find it truly moved the application forward (generating PDFs, calendar, …). Thankfully, MVPs (long before my time) were kind enough to have provided solutions to many of these issues.

Then even when they did incorporate a solution, it was half-baked: Calendar, Ribbon, …

Take the calendar for instance. You can’t interact with it in VBA in any manner.  It only goes month by month.  There is no Time component.  Why would they not have turned to Allen Browne, Stephen Lebans et al. and used one of their much better solutions (at the very least inspired themselves from them).  UA also has a great Time Pieces sample.  Why put in place such a limited tool thus making us implement something else anyways.  Now, the first thing I do is run code to disable the date picker on any db I take over and put in place one of the above.

Take the Ribbon, ignoring the real-estate it uses in comparison to the old Command bars, they never offered a tool to develop it. Don’t get me wrong, Gunter’s app is great, but why should you need a 3rd party tools to create a menu for your database?  Do you remember how easy it was to create Command Bars!

The attachment data type, really!? This is getting more people into trouble than anything else.  Access simply was never meant to store external items.

Navigation Custom Grouping.  There is no way to export the custom groupings and I’ve experienced it when all the Groups just vanished into thin air!?  You don’t want to know how much time it took to recreate everything.  Even then, You can’t rename object when in Custom Group mode, so you have to switch back to normal object mode, rename it, then return to Custom mode.  Talk about turning in circles.

Multi-Value Fields!  Enough said.

And on and on …

A lot of good intentions, but I just find they are incomplete. They start down a path but never properly complete the voyage.

Don’t get me wrong, I too appreciate the Report to PDF (although Stephen Lebans had resolved that issue long ago!), and I have a complete love/hate relationship with the Ribbon, but at the end of the day, I feel their (Access Dev Team’s) energies were improperly focused and focused on the wrong items in many instances.  I would have much preferred seeing improvements to:

• Linked Table Manager (scrollbar to see the full path, sortable, …)
• SQL Editor (in dyer need to improvements, heck Notepad is more advanced!)
• Charting (another element in dyer need of improvement)
• VBE (this is another aspect that hasn’t moved forward in 20+ years and that could be improved in numerous ways, just look at SmartIndenter, Mz-Tools and the likes.)
• Improved Packaging Wizard instead of eliminating it
• Improved shortcut menus (now it’s a mess!)

 

Your Turn to Talk

So this post is to ask you, what are your thoughts on how Access has evolved?
Has it evolved?
Are you happy with where it is, compared to where it was, compared to where it could/should be 30 years later?
Are you happy with the improvements that were made or were there much more pressing area that needed attention and that were ignored?

There are no right or wrong answers, just curious what people think.