For decades, Microsoft Access has held a unique place in the business software landscape, bridging the gap between spreadsheets and full-scale databases. It gave power users a way to build small, custom applications without needing a dedicated development team. As the business and software environments evolve, I am beginning to question whether Access continues to hold its value as a practical solution.

Access still offers undeniable strengths. It is an amazing RAD tool for developing complete solutions, integrates cleanly with other Microsoft products (less so now with the New Outlook and the web versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, … not supporting any direct VBA automation), and remains approachable for those without a programming background. I can quickly create prototypes, or even complete working solutions in some instances.
 
However, there is a growing sense of frustration as I rely on Access for more than just basic tasks. Longstanding bugs persist through multiple releases, key features remain unfinished, and promised improvements on the product roadmap often either never arrive or appear years later in a limited form barely suitable for real-world use. Access also continues to exist only as a desktop application, with no true web-enabled version, making it the final member of the Microsoft Office suite without a proper online presence (as Microsoft pushes everything to the cloud, this worries me). Then again, if they do ever come out with a web version it would most probably rely on DataVerse which would not be a beneficial change by any means! The absence of CoPilot integration further underscores how little attention Microsoft seems to give the product compared to its modern, cloud-based counterparts or any of the other Office applications. More recently, the loss of Outlook automation and Microsoft’s deprecation of VBScript have added to the growing challenges for developers and advanced users who depend on Access to automate workflows and integrate with other Office applications. Upcoming changes to ActiveX security is also a concern. Furthermore, despite years of feedback through official suggestion platforms (UserVoice & Feedback Portal), many long-standing issues remain unacknowledged and unresolved. The pace of meaningful updates has slowed to the point that development now appears primarily focused on resolving bugs. This raises legitimate concerns about whether Access is still a priority within Microsoft’s broader ecosystem. The development team’s prolonged silence, with months passing between blog updates, roadmap changes, non-existent community engagement, and lack of any form of maintenance of the Feedback Portal, only further reinforces uncertainty about the product’s future direction and Microsoft’s overall commitment to the product as a whole.

For me the product :

• Lacks a clear strategic direction, both long-term and short-term. This is reflected in repeated roadmap inconsistencies and missed commitments, and the lack of any medium or long-term items on the roadmap or blog to show product vision and engage their users.
• Shows limited user engagement, as demonstrated by the inactivity of the Feedback Portal, Roadmap, and Blog; each of which goes months or even years without updates.
• Provides insufficient user support, with no formal bug reporting or support system, the abandonment of both the Fixes & Workarounds and the Feedback Portal sites, and the absence of release notes.
• Raises concerns about quality, given the recurring issues with released features and the instability introduced in successive updates.
• …

To be fair, sustaining a legacy product with millions of existing databases is no small feat. Stability and backward compatibility come at a cost, often in the form of slower innovation. Yet in a software world increasingly driven by rapid iteration, cloud-native design, and cross-platform accessibility, this trade-off feels more noticeable every year.

So the question remains: is Access still the right choice for organizations that need reliable, modern tools to manage their business logic? Or is it time for me to transition toward platforms better aligned with how teams now build and share data-driven applications?

The answer may depend on context. For smaller, well-contained use cases and personal projects, Access can still be a pragmatic choice for me, but only when following best practices and avoiding most new ‘features’. On the other hand, if I expect stability (not be impacted by continuous Windows and/or Office/Access update bugs), steady user driven improvements, cloud readiness, any form of integration with modern AI tools like CoPilot , or even basic REST API interactivity, it might be time to explore what else is out there.