Import Excel Where Are You? Anyone Else Confused!

A recent discussion started by a fellow MVP Alum brought to my attention a recent change in the Access interface brought on by the most recent update (1706). It would appear that the Dev Team has decided to try and save some space.

Microsoft has Removed/Moved commands:

  • Excel
  • Access
  • ODBC Databases
  • Text File
  • XML File
  • More

from the Import & Link grouping from the External Data tab in the Ribbon, causing confusion.

Let look at things historically for a moment

2007

2010

2013

2016 Pre 1706

And Now the New Setup

2016 Post 1706

So What has Actually Taken Place?

The following image illustrates what the Access Dev Tean have done: pushed all the commands into sub-menus.

Now you will find each command under a new structured menu setup

Does This Makes Sense?

Some will say yes, some will say no.

Why it makes sense

  • It standardized everything
  • It reduces the Ribbon Tab Group’s footprint

Why it doesn’t make any sense

  • It now requires 3 steps to do what previously could be accomplished with a single click!
  • In this specific case, there was plenty of room on the tab, so the space saving reasoning makes no sense
  • After more than 10 years stability, Microsoft has decided to change the basic layout of common commands causing great confusion
    • They also changed the order of the commands and changed the sizes

So at the end of  the day, They’ve simplified the Ribbon, but by doing so complexified the usage of the commands themselves, changed the longstanding layout for what?!

What I also don’t understand is if they have chosen to “simplify” (and I use that term very loosely in this context) the Import & Link grouping then why, oh why, have they not done the same for the Export grouping?

Priorities!  What weird priorities!  So many other fish to fry and they decide to put time and effort into this?!  Needless to say, I, for one, do not understand this change and certainly not as a software update.

What Does The Future Hold?

Well if the Import & Link Grouping is any indication, I suspect we will be seeing similar changes to the ribbon for many other commands, so hold on, I suspect things are going to get more confusing.

 

Did you notice this change with the most recent 1706 update?
What are your thoughts?

3 responses on “Import Excel Where Are You? Anyone Else Confused!”

  1. Patricia Hartman

    Access has so many outstanding bugs that one wonders what MS’s priorities are. Wouldn’t the money this change cost have been better spent fixing a bug or “unfixing” one of the other awful changes that were implemented in the A2007 release. Change for the sake of change is senseless and ultimately irritates consumers rather than increasing usability. I would love to hear from MS to understand how they could possibly justify this half done change. Consistency is critical in software. Users familiar with one feature have an expectation for similar features. Why is the Import now hidden away while the Export is still laid out for ease of use? Not to mention the imposition of all those extra keystrokes every single time you have to use the feature. Consider two changes made to Access in A2007 that make the Nav Pain (sic) work differently from Windows file dialogs and from its predecessor the Database Container. In Windows File Explorer you can click into a file name and simply type over a file name. Access used to work exactly the same way. I never thought about it until some bright bulb changed Access to work differently. To rename a file, you must right-click, choose rename, and then find that the whole name is selected and so you need to re position the insertion point. Why is this “better” than the File Explorer method? Why would anyone want the two to be different? A similar thoughtless change occurred with rename. Windows suffixes the copy name and Access used to also. Now Access prefixes the copy. Why? Just to make it awkward to re position the pointer to change the name to be what I want it to be? I don’t love the Ribbon but I understand the rational. However, even after 10 years I still hate the Navigation Pane. I use Access every single day and the number of extra keystrokes imposed by the Nav Pain has to be in the millions by now.