Most developers, at some point in time, need to make a change throughout a database, say change a field name. Now it can be a serious PITA to remember every object, every piece of code in which it was used, thus the need for a tool to help. Now I have previous written a post regarding this very subject, Great Access Tools – Find and Replace, but last week Philipp Stiefel of AccessDevTools was kind enough to invite me to try out a new add-in his company had developed. Below are my thoughts.

A Quick Overview of the Find and Replace for MS-Access

So let me introduce to you the AccessDevTools’ ‘Find and Replace for MS-Access’ add-in.

After downloading and installing the add-in you will have an extra tab in your Access Ribbon.

As you can see, as it should be, it is pretty simple and intuitive to use. Simply decide if you are performing a Search or a Replace and click the appropriate button.

The Find dialog looks like

and the Replace dialog looks like

A Concrete Usage Example

A simple ‘Find’ for a field name ‘LastName’ in one of my bogus databases would look like

run it and in a few moments you will be returned a listing of the results as shown below

You can double-click on any individual item in the list to see the details

Pros

• Offered in both 32 and 64-bit versions
• Works on Access 2007 onward (2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Access 365)
• Offered as a trial version so you can test it out prior to purchasing

• Easy to install
• Easy to load the license file
• Intuitive interface
• Quick at both Finding and Replacing

Cons

• It doesn’t appear to search linked tables, so you would have to perform searches on each file used in a split database scenario
• It doesn’t appear to search calculated fields
• You can’t copy content from the Result list, there are no export options on the Result list either, so you must return to the initial dialog and select the Result Option (Save to database or Save to file) and then redo the search

That said, by using the Save to database option, you will end up with a new table with all the results and also be presented with the result listing (best of both worlds).  With the table now, you can do whatever it is you’d like (sort, export, …).  So basically I’m saying always use the ‘Save to database’ option!

In a general sense this is a great add-in!  Don’t get me wrong, there are a few kinks to be ironed out, but at least this tool is supported and I know AccessDevTools will continue to work and improve upon the product. All in all I don’t think you can go wrong with this product. I’m looking forward to future versions.