Give us feedback – How can we help you work faster and more efficient?

Let's see if this works..... There are many little things that worked perfectly in 2003 but then someone decided to 'improve' it. When it works... Don't want to be annoying so I will say only one or two: In table design view the F6 key used to jump from the top pane to the property pane. In 2007 the F6 key jumps at 'four' different places. The extra two are useless, the previous two were perfect. Wadda ya want I'm a keyboard type of guy. In 2003 when you reopened a database and hit F11 the Database Window 'remembered' the last item that was selected. In 2007 it was 'improved' and the Database Window does not remember anything. Allow me one last please:

In 2003 the object Description was clearly a Database window feature. For example you could sort by this column. I used to tell my customers that if they wanted to create their own queries they would precede they names by a special acronym while I would use qry. This way they would quickly sort them. Now in 2007 the Description stopped working for a while. Thanks for a quickfix that restored it a few months later. Finally it is too bad that the Description property was relegated to the peanut gallery. Now many people don't even know it exist. How are they to documents their dozens of queries, forms and reports? Let's see if this goes anywhere. Daniel

Thanks Daniel. Exactly the kind of feedback we are looking for.

In my world, as a professional Access developer, it's not the little tweaks that make a difference, it's when Access falls down in a total heap that messes things up for me. For example: for some reason, on my main development machine, Access's wizards have simply stopped working. All the research I've done hasn't lead me to an answer, uninstalling and reinstalling Office 2007 hasn't fixed it, all the advice I've found about editing the registry hasn't fixed it, and I'm wondering if I'll have to go for a scorched earth approach and reinstall from a bare hard-drive up. It's one of those things that looks like it's going to take fifteen minutes to fix. Then another fifteen minutes, then another. Next thing you know, three days have been lost. So, how about making sure that the Office/Access install and repair process is bulletproof?

Andrew @ use the email link to send me your contact info. We can hook you up with our support team.

Andrew, Have a look at page 5 of a Word document that I call "Access Links". This includes instructions for how to fix wizard-related problems in Access 2003 and lesser versions, although I'm not positive if everything applies equally well to Access 2007. You are welcome to download a zipped copy from my web site: www.accessmvp.com/.../index.htm Neha and Clint:

Andrew has a valid point about making the Office/Access install and repair process bulletproof. For example, if the DAO Object Library (Dao360.dll) or the ADO Object Library (Msado15.dll) is not properly registered, a repair will not fix this problme. It should. Tom Wickerath

Microsoft Access MVP

I've been prgramming Access for some years and woudl REALLY like to see a treeview builder wizard. These are great controls, but require some serious effort to implement them. If I'm noty mistaken wasn;t there a wizard plugin for Acc97 for a treeview wizard? This woudl simplify SO much...

efficientLY. It's an adverb, not a verb, despite what Hollywood would have you believe.

Hello all, Dont know wether this was a problem with Access or with SQL server, but it was not there like this in my previous 97 version of access.

We just migrated our 5 years old application from 97-2007 version of access.Every thing is fine except a subform with weird behaviour.

A subform in my application was not able to generate the auto numbers in the linked SQL server table. (A primary key column with auto increment seed).But the raw table in the backend was working fine...In the form It was generating an error some times can not insert nulls and some times can not insert duplicate values..

FYI..surpisingly, all other forms with this kinda functionality are working fine .. The funniest thing is, looks like, I'm the only one facing this problem, coz' after lot of googling also, i'm not able to find one who is having problem like mine.. :( Even now also,i'm living with this problem (with an alternate work around..). Neha & Clint, do you have any such kinda scenarios ?

Hi Neha - Firstly, thanks for asking. We've just done a user-feedback survey and learnt SO much. It's no good designing "great" software and being a legend in our own minds, if it's not what the user wants! Please keep asking. Your first point about the calendar is on the money. We need users to set tasks for up to 3 (or more) years ahead - that 36 clicks of the button. Duh! Who thought of that - someone without real-world experience, maybe? We'll probably get around it by using Allen Browne's calendar found here: allenbrowne.com/ser-51.html. Thank god for Allen Browne - a true legend! (If anyone wants a spruced-up version for Access 2010 contact me here: www.loanlinx.com.au/.../contactus.htm). As to pain-points, should I mention the ribbon? Even with the the help of Gunter Avenius' handy tool, it's still a pain to configure and shortcut menus take hours instead of seconds. Bring back RAD! Thanks again for asking. Chris

Sorry - forgot to mention another issue with the Calendar. With 2010 we are unable to use an input mask if you also want to use the Date Picker. This doesn't make a lot of sense. We set the field to Short Date, with a mask of !99/99/9999;0;_ so that the user can enter 101210 (nothing else) and get it displaying as 10/12/2010 - nice & quick. But the Date Picker then gets disabled! Would be great to be able to use both features together for maximum efficiency please. Chris

Chris, The input Mask messed up the Date picker in Access 2007 as well. I hope that gets fixed.

What I would really like is an effective way to share a library of forms and code for several databases. The code and forms should be able to reside in their own file, so I can update them easily and all the databases that use them would automatically use the updates. Thanks, Sue

Hi There, I like many comments above. Especially the idea that the database window was the best developer time saver. It's a simple sortable list of objects by type. The Navpane is nice for left navigation in apps but we need the db window. Even my clients who are not what I'd call power users feel unnessesary pain when I have to try to teach them how to do things that were so easy in the db window. A couple things I'd like to see are these:

Ability to dril into design of source query from the design of a subsequent query. In past versions, you open a query to look at the design only to find that it's based on another query. So you go to db win and sort and find the source query. Perhaps that one is based on a query too...back to db win again. This is especially painful now that it's so many clicks to get a sorted list of queries in the new navpane. Would be so nice to just double click on a query within the design of another query to open that one in design view. Similarly, it would be nice to get to query design by clicking on query name in code. Many VBA functions run update queries and recordsource objects based on queries have the query name in the code. Would be nice to double click on the code and open the query design. Again another shortcut idea that is made even more useful by the dreaded navpane. Can't you please add a sortable mutlicolumn list view to the nav pane and have it ready to use OOB just like the old db win? Please please please. Another idea, fixup the linked table manger. As is: say you have linked 12 tables to 3 BE files. 4 links to each BE. If you select 'prompt for new location' it makes you specify each BE 4 times. Would be nice if it would display the 4 BEs and let you specify new location only once per BE file. This would be nice so we could avoid using code to swap links. The linked table wizard is sooo Access95:) Clearly MS is breathing new life into Access and for that we are so greatful! Keep up the great work! Thanks,

Josh

My bigggest complaint so far (still mainly working on 2003, as that's where my clients tend to be) is that 2007 tries too hard to "help". That's fine for when a user is working with Access as a desktop tool - it's NOT when I'm building a program, and the built-in "stuff" assumes I'm trying to one thing, which I might not be. Or, even worse, the user interface overrides my program. I'm sure I'll find ways around it, but it would be REALLY nice if I were able to turn off all ribbon and "helpful" interferences for a development package. Then, allow me to call them if needed. As a programmer, I really need to be "in charge". Ben

Hi Sue, What you are describing is very possible. Some what cumbersome, so maybe you're asking for an easy way to manage such a design. I would second that request. If you want the how-to I'll share what I do: Create an mdb having your library of common code and forms. Then add some public functions that call the common DoCmd tasks like this:

''''Air code

Function Refdb_OpenForm(stFormName as string) docmd.openform stFormName

End Function

''''''

Make sure it's compiled and save it as an mde. In the Access application file, add a reference in VBA to the mde file. Now you can open forms in the library by calling Refdb_OpenForm from the application. This is how the old wizards that come with Access are done. I have many apps that are separted into modules and run as one lightweight composite app using a framework like this. It's automated and table based so references are added on the fly at runtime based on user permissions. There are other considerations that I can share if you're interested such as CurrentDB vs. CodeDB and DLookup issues, but nothing I've not been able to work around. The only limitation is there is no known way to release a referenced file at runtime. When you remove a reference, the library mde file remains locked. You have to close and reopen Access to drop the locking on a referenced file. This can be done because the wizard files that come in Access release locking on the refferenced mde, but how to do so is undocumented. Clint and Access Team would have to share the secret. Warning, I've not tried this in 2010 yet...let's hope references still are available. HTH,

Josh