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

It would be nice to have a wizard or the built in ability to display options in one drop down based on the selection in another drop down. Right now you have to go through and write code to do that and I'm sure it's becoming increasingly common....or maybe I've just missed the easy way to do this...

How about making some of the clicking easier to do. Like making the column selection control in QBE taller. Also, make the relationship lines thicker to make it easier to select and left click.

Why do the tabs change automatically as I change views and tasks. If I want to choose a different tab, that is easy enough to do, I do not need Access changing the tabs for me.

I've been developing in access since version 1.0 & I'm used having to learn new ways to do stuff with each new version. But I hate the ribbon & the Nav Pane (should be called Nav Pain). I can't find objects quickly enough with the nav pane & it takes up too much real estate when I'm designing forms/reports. I also can't program the ribbon to my users liking. Whenever possible I still develop in Access03 & then upgrade to Access07. In query design mode being able to double-click the table or subquery & open the query or table would be an excellent improvement. Forms which can have grouping, like reports, & therefore group totals would be nice.

I work in an environment with both Office 2003 and Office 2007. When I develop an access application and set a reference to Word 2003 and the application gets opened in 2007, Access automatically changes the reference to Word 2007. But then when opened by an Office 2003 user, it errors out because it cannot revert to the 2003 version. I have been working around this by changed the code to use Objects, instead of the reference to the Object Model, after development is complete. But it is a lot easier to develop, if the intellisense is available through the object model.

A few things off hand: I would like the option to switch to database window if wanted. I also miss that little dropdown box at the top left with my controls.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I am taking them all down. Also, feel free to email us via the blog. Let me know if you would like to send me attachments (documents, screenshots). Thanks again!

Since you brought up the date picker, would be nice if you could also specify a particular time or have a time picker built-in.

Hi All, Wasn't sure where to ask this but this seems a lively enough discussion. When will MS get the MCAS certification tests up & running for Office 2010 ? www.microsoft.com/.../mbc.aspx ...and while we're at it, will MS ever offer developer level certifcation in Access/Office ?

To John Renkar: Using late binding for released versions is the only reliable way to handle this situation, in an environment that includes more than one version of Office. However, that said, it *appears* as if you may be releasing an unsplit application for all users to run. I recommend splitting your application into two database files, commonly known as a "Front-End" (FE) application file and a "Back-End" (BE) data file. The FE contains all queries, forms, reports, macros, modules and any non-shared data in local tables (for example, a table that saves user preferences). The BE file includes the tables with shared data. Each user should be running their own local copy of the FE application file (from their hard drives) so that no two users ever have the same copy of the FE open simultaneously. Only the BE file should be shared amongst all users. The most important reason for doing this is that sharing an unsplit Access application is the # 1 cause of JET database corruption, according to people on the Access Development Team at Microsoft. You've been lucky so far, if your application has not corrupted. Other benefits include you being able to make design changes to the FE, without having to ask all users to first exit (you'll still need to have everyone out to make any changes to the BE). More info. here: Split the Database www.access.qbuilt.com/.../gem_tips1.html www.accessmvp.com/.../splitting.html Tom Wickerath

Microsoft Access MVP

How about the ability to copy a control's code when you copy the control. It would make it so much easier if there was a 'Copy with code' on the right click which after pasting the control you could then edit the code rather than having to enter it.

Tom's comment about splitting reminds me of something: It's very very common question asked by many novices and I feel that it's actually an unnecessary step. I am very well aware of Microsoft's rationale for wanting a single file solution, but I'd like to propose that the file be changed into a package.. that is, a folder that feel and looks like a single file but is actually a collection of files so the Access application would be _always_ split but it wouldn't be required that they have to go into the folder's content to manage all files- one package would still function just like a single file. With this, that should also set the stage for removing the filesystem restriction on database size. I'm sure with a bit of voodoo you can expend database across files and keep the referential integrity. Another oft asked questions would be "how to make a cascading comboboxes". I would urge the team to provide a facility for creating a "User-Defined Control" that then can be templatized and shared and placed into a new form/report as a single control. By allowing a user to define a group of control into a single user-defined control and specifying the required properties & events, it will help simplify the reptitious tasks of building common controls such as cascading comboboxes, transferring listboxes, a textbox & Filedialog and so forth. On a similar vein, it would be very convenient if it were possible to use a template Form and Report as a source for subforms/subreports across more than one form/report. An example is an Address Form which may display just slightly differently depending on which forms needs it. The current approach of needing to copy several Address forms can turn into a maintenance problem and the way Access object model exposes forms does not always lends to easy management (for example, no constructor to parameterize the form's behavior and referencing the form's class does not always behave nicely). Regarding the ribbon: I will only say that I was sufficiently frustrated with it that I decided to customize the ribbon for my own development work, collapsing 3 default tabs into a single tab and eliminating most of buttons that I never use. It is frustrating to use because it's not quite predictive as menus was. On menu, it's easy to pick up on how you should scan for something: Across, then Down. Repeat this for submenus. But on ribbons, the "ideal" direction is Across, Across but that is not always the case. Ribbon allows for either large or small icons, so it could have one to three controls on the ribbon, complicating the scan direction. The presence of several buttons that are similar also has led me to click on the wrong buttons many times, again because my brain is trying to scan through the buttons quickly with the complicated scan direction that it filters out the little icons on the bottom left and focus on the upper right quadrant and thus I end up clicking on "Query Wizard" when I want "Query Design" or "Table" when I want "Table Design" and I know I've wasted few seconds looking for "Data Definition" or "Pass-Through Queries" buried in the clutter on the Query Design tab. There's more to this but this is just an example of where ribbons seem to complicate things more than it helps. 2003's menus weren't that great but at least I didn't go as far to customize just to use it as I did with 2007's ribbon. Ribbon's customization actually is easier than menu's customization, but users customizing the ribbons just to use Access should not be the answer. Regarding Nav Pane, I think it's good as a end-user deployment, actually. But for development, it's not that good. One important functionality that was lost was the ability to sort objects by Description. Showing details in Nav Pane causes objects to enlarge to 3 lines which reduces the total numbers of objects that can be seen in a single glance. I would love it if you could provide a Solution Explorer or Object Browser a la Visual Studio in Access for the development. While we're on the subject, it may make sense to support two modes- using Access as an application and as an IDE. Trying to combine them tends to make it worse for both, I would think. Best to support a clean separate interface for different mode and thus contributing to productivity in both modes. On the subject of deployment, it would be nice if there was a easy way to validate and repair the references, especially within a runtime deployment. This might be helped by providing an application-level event* to occur before any reference is required for example. I understand there's Packaging Wizard and other solutions but none of those solutions were easy to use, deploy and distribute - they usually require a fair amount of manhandling. *And not just this one event; we could use more.. such as Application.Quit event for example. All Office apps has application level events. Access doesn't. Why? Also, with the computer's processing trending toward more cores rather than faster cores, please look into feasibility of running queries asynchronously. Lock the objects for the queries, if necessary, but don't lock up the whole application to run a heavy query. Doing this for other similar operations (linking tables? Loading a report?) would be beneficial. One common pain point I've came across and seen others struggle is importing data from non relational data sources. For example, Excel does not have a defined data type, so Access "guess" what data type it should be. Sometimes it's wrong and we have to do an extra step of importing into a temporary table then converting the data type. This could be improved by allowing the user to define how to import this and that as what data type, telling Access what to do if it comes across invalid data. This is specific to 2010 -- I quite like the new macro designer but it is quite frustrating should there be an error. There is no support for single-stepping in all types of macros and sometime the error message are obtuse and sometime it get routed to USysApplicationErrors. I really hope that the team will facility a better facility for debugging those macros as effectively as VBA can be. Considering supporting trace logging at least so variables' value can be followed without manual insertion of messagebox and whatnots. I hope this helps a bit.

I've been using Access since 1.0 and love it. For "fun" I recently created an iPhone app with Apple's Objective C. OMG - no context sensitive help, no right clicking on objects to bring up properties, no help on properties, etc, etc. Thank goodness for Access.

FONT SIZE

DIALOG BOX DIMENSIONS

COPY PATH\FILENAME FOR ALL DATA

EXPAND HELP TEAM

~~~ Hi Neha, thank you for starting this thread :) Now that the trend is monitors with higher resolution, the small dialog boxes and font sizes need to be given consideration. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Font size It was asked, "Is it possible to specify a font size in Expression Builder?" Ctrl-MouseWheel will resize the Expression Builder font, it is not an easily discoverable feature. The small font size did not used to be an issue for me (although it has always been important to be able to enlarge for training purposes), but my eyes are changing as I get older and I now have difficulty with the defaults. To Microsoft, the Expression Builder and ZoomBox are different entities. From a User's perspective, if font size is set in one, it should affect the other. [ Feature Request: Default Popup Data Font Size ] What about a default that sets font size for controls containing user information in, not only the ZoomBox and Expression Builder, but other popup things like InputBox and values in the Linked Table Manager? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dialog Box Dimensions The first dialog box that needs to be bigger (wider), in my opinion, is for the Linked Table Manager. And, wow! I see a wider dialog box with a horizontal scrollbar in 2010 -- thank you! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Where is the Data? Path and Filename If I want to know or copy a path and/or filename, I do this in the immediate window: ? currentdb.tabledefs("tablename").Connect End users are simply stuck. Tooltips on objects in the Nav Pane are not the solution ... unless you provide a way to copy what is in the tip to the Clipboard (Ctrl-Shift-C or something) ... but those wide tooltips in 2010 databases are also annoying. I don't want to see them all the time -- display needs to be an option [ Feature Request: Navigation Pane Option: checkbox for Show Data Source Information in tooltips ] The Linked Table Manager has been redesigned to show the full path (yay!) ... now just two more things ... (1) a way to copy what is there to the Clipboard, and (2) a way to make the text (we can now fully see to the end) BIGGER so we can read it too ;) Another path that users need to be able to easily see, and copy, is CurrentProject.Path Many of them open their database with an icon or just go get the last file and have no idea where the database actually is. I often copy the CurrentProject Path to paste into the address bar of Windows Explorer [ Feature Request: Easily Discover and Copy Path\Filename for Database and Linked Tables ] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Helpless Help If I need to look up meaningful Help, I use Google. There is only one page in Access 2010 Help I have been impressed with -- and I sent a positive comment about it. I quit sending comments on what is wrong with Help because I would be writing them on every page ... if I find what I am looking for, if it is even there. Being able to get context-sensitive Help quickly is critical to efficiency. Why has this been taken away??? Poor help steals money from me by reducing my daily productivity. I lose several hundred hours a year in wasted time because the new versions of Access click it away. To be productive, we need to context-sensitive Help back. 1. highlight a Class or Member entry in the Object Browser and press F1 2. press F1 in VBA or Immediate window on a keyword

3. press F1 on the Property Sheet -- not just forms and reports, but queries and tables too. ... and the Help needs to be well-written -- especially for the new stuff. Now pressing F1 -- anywhere -- simply takes you to the poorly indexed and poorly written Help contents -- not anything specific. As a result, I probably spend an extra 2 hours (or more) each day I have much looking up to do. [ Feature Request: Helpful Help ] [ Budget Request: 500,000 ] If Microsoft wants folks to learn the new versions, there must be an easier way to do it than the route I have taken. A serious chunk of Microsoft's budget needs to be allocated to Help. I would suggest 5 more people dedicated to this task, just for Access (which probably doubles the current team), until it is worth the effort to press F1. Users of the new and strange version of Access need the comfort of good help -- even if you just hire people to index elements to msdn pages. How about using a database? 15 years ago, Microsoft put a lot into Help -- and the team to write it was big. A focus needs to be made, once again, on educating the end-user and the developer to take advantage of the tremendous capabilities in Access. ~~~~~~~~~~ I will have more to say ... just getting started ;) Aside from capabilities that we, as developers, have lost that decrease our productivity (which I will expand on), the new Access experience well by this, "all those clicks and right-clicks and scrolling add up to a lot of time to a developer." Almost everything takes longer. This means we get less done in a day, we deliver less to our clients, and we make less money. If I need to crank out an application quickly, I will do whatever I can in 2003. Warm Regards,

Crystal * (: have an awesome day :) *

SELECTING in Datasheet View

~~~ Select All Columns

~~~ "Click to Add" gets in the way

~~~ Change selection with Left Click

~~~ Resize Columns

HIDE SORT & FILTER COMBO on Datasheet

TABLE DESIGN for Web db

LOOKUP FIELD DEFINITIONs and RELATIONSHIPS

USER DEFINED TYPES

FIELD ORDINAL POSITION

TABLES DISAPPEAR from Web Databases

Modifying UNPUBLISHED WEB DATABASE

~~~ Hi Neha, more comments... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Selecting in Datasheet View Selecting needs to be more efficient. ~~~ Select All Columns In Access, Ctrl-A has always selected all the records. The column headers did not appear selected in older versions, but obviously they were since they got pasted. In 2010, Ctrl-A also "appears" to select the columns -- wow! I thought ... but it is only for pasting the headers; the columns are still not selected for multi-column actions such as resizing) The only way I know of to select all the columns for action in Access is to click in the first one and drag right. Now, as soon as the mouse touches the last column to add a new field, the selection disappears and "Click to Add" lights up. Therefore, one has to start the selection again and be sure to stop exactly on the last column. Dragging past the right no longer automatically scrolls either. We used to be able to click in the first column header and blindly drag to the right, past the right boundary, to select all the columns. Now we can't. This makes selecting all the columns (to resize, for instance) take exponentially more time. [ Feature Request: Select All Columns. (1) add option to Column Header, Right-Click (2) assign shortcut Shift-Ctrl-A ] ~~~ "Click to Add" gets in the way [ Feature Request: Trigger the "Click to Add" feature on CLICK, as the instruction says, not Mouse Over ] CLICK to add should do just that -- make the user click. And what signifies Click better than a command button? [ Feature Request: Make "Click to Add" a command button that is just beyond the last column -- or get rid of in the datasheet view since the ability is on the ribbon ] ... at least let us ignore "Click to Add" in our column selections and actions unless we are specifically resizing it or actively making a new field (in which case, we wouldn't be selecting) I can see the intention is to make columns behave like rows -- but fields and records are different. Access is not Excel. ~~~ Change selection with Left Click If several columns are selected, and the left mouse button is clicked in a column header that is part of the selection, the selection should change to that column. This is another thing we used to be able to do. Now we have to click on a record or select a column header outside the selection before we can select the desired column. This new behavior is one more thing that decreases productivity. [ Feature Request: Change selection with Left Click, as it used to be ] ~~~ Resize Columns If a column is selected, one can place the mouse pointer on the right boundary of a column to resize it. It takes an extra click to first select the column. If the column is not first selected, when the mouse goes anywhere near the Sort & Filter combo that is flush to the right edge, the resizing pointer is not available on the boundary line. Instead, the mouse must be placed a smidgeon to the right of the boundary to resize a column. This redefines the way I must think when I work in Access. I want the familiar behavior back. It was sensible. I do not like the Sort & Filter combo being displayed in column headers when I open a table; I want to turn it off. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hide Sort & Filter combo for table There is already a Sort & Filter area on the Home ribbon with bigger than necessary buttons to give these abilities to the user. The Sort & Filter combo in the column header of a table is an example of something that was done for beginners but it is really annoying when you are sizing columns to see the data, or when you need columns to be narrow and still show the field name. I do not want an arrow taking space away from the fieldname in every column. In a Form, where users are more concerned with data values, the combos make better sense. [ Feature Request: New Property for Table and Form: Hide or Show the Sort & Filter combo on Datasheet column headers -- or at least a way to toggle the display on and off ] When a table is open, performance and features should be geared to the developer, not the end-user. Once end-users learn more about Access, they will use Forms. Making tables behave like forms encourages users to enter data directly into tables instead of learning about Forms ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table Design - Web db It is FAR more efficient to set tables up in design view. Web databases do not give us this ability. If one is renaming fields in the design view of a Client table, it is quick. In the datasheet view for a web table, it is cumbersome. Click "Name & Caption" from the ribbon to get a popup box to set the Name, Caption, and Description for each field individually. There is no way to look at the overall design of the table beyond the datasheet view until one builds a query -- but that only shows field names, not any other properties. This makes building a table take much, much more time. We need table design view for web databases showing all the properties that are relevant ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lookup Field Definitions and Relationships Because web databases use lookup fields to define relationships, I thought it would save time to set up all the lookups in a regular Access database before I converted it to a web database. The process of going back and forth between relationship diagram (which can be simulated in a web database using a query with no fields on the grid), table design, and data entry must be iterative to achieve the best design. Web databases do not take the fact that developers do this into account. Anyway, I did not save time. Before my tables could be imported into the web database, every last one of the lookup fields had to be removed (along with every relationship, even ones that were web-compliant) [ Feature Request: import Lookup field definitions and Create indicated Relationships. Import Web-Compliant Relationships ] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ User Defined Types "Save Selection as New Data Type" ... Where is it ? Who would think to look here? : > Fields > Add & Delete > More Fields > Save Selection as New Data Type [ Feature Request: add 'Save Selection as New Data Type' to the column header shortcut menu ] When I saw this feature, which I had read about in the Access Team Blog, I saved one of the lookup fields (foreign keys) that I was going to have to create in several of the web tables. I was happy to then be able to choose my lookup field under User Defined Types when creating it in other tables. It was fast. The field went in perfectly, or so I thought. The combo worked for the lookups and I entered data. I prepared to move on to another set of tables. ... then I opened the query I made to show relationships and noticed that all the fields created with the not-so-handy new feature did not have the required relationships. My excitement was dashed away. I had to delete all those foreign key fields, recreate them to get the relationships, and put my data in again. [ Feature Request: make a Relationship when a User Defined Type is used that would trigger a relationship if created manually ] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Field Ordinal Position To minimize lines crossing on a relationship diagram (or query created to show relationships), I change the order of fields as I rearrange the layout. In web databases, the field list order does not change. When I rearrange my fields in the table layout, I want the field Ordinal Number to change as well. [ Feature Request: give us a way to edit Field Ordinal Position or change it when we rearrange fields ] I plan to write code to modify Ordinal Position , if it is able to be changed, because I am very picky about how the layout looks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tables disappear from Web Databases A side effect to renaming key fields is, it obviously makes lookup definitions invalid, even if AutoCorrect is on (so what good is it?). The result is a web database that is no longer compliant. If I then close this non-compliant web database and link to its tables from another database, then when I open the web database again, my tables are gone from the Navigation Pane and all I see is the "Web Compatibility Issues" table. What ??? Good thing I had a backup. This happened to me 3 times before I figured out what was happening. Now I can make my tables disappear anytime. The file size doesn't get smaller, even after Compact & Repair, so the data is obviously still there. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Modify Unpublished Web Database Once I finally got all my client tables into my web database, I began tweaking the structure, putting back all the lookup fields, and ... renaming fields. Some of these renamed fields are key fields that are used to define lookups. "Modify Lookups" does not work in the beta for an unpublished database. Is Modify Lookups potentially only designed to work once a synchronization has been done? If so, this must change. [ Feature Request: if a web database has never been published, let us do everything as if it were synchronized ] I am writing code to document all the lookup definitions because I have so many of them in my database and some of them are wrong. Hopefully, I will be able to change them with code as well. My web database (which I am creating to be a template and submit to Microsoft) has 40 tables. Almost every table has relationships. Warm Regards,

Crystal * (: have an awesome day :) *

♥ Make SQl designer more powerful

i) double click on object to quickly link to it. ii) allow ALIGNMENT to make it readable and don't remove my line feed. I use SQL heavily on Access (UNION at least 10 tables) and i cant read from the designer, i need to copy and paste somewhere else to read better. iii) Color identifier on SQL statement iv) In [query design] mode, i need to double click on table field to add field to my query, which is a great feature BUT nottice the bottom it is added horizontally! Even wide screen wont show out all if i have 30 fields! Why dont try this: it is easier to read

Fields Properties

----------- ------------

| Field 1 | |Field Name|

| Field 2 | |Table |

| Field 3 | |Total |

| ... | |Sort |

| ... | |Show |

----------- ------------

► Fields ► Field property

i addded iv) Please allow [Ctr+F] in SQL design mode. I cant find the word/field name i need to update! These are what i called productivity!