I have extensive experience developing application in Access 200/2003. I've been presented with an opportunity to develop a manufacturing process database but the client wants it developed in 2007. What is the learning curve for 2007 for those with prior Access experience? This is a great contract but I don't want to get in over my head, Any advice? I know I will eventually need to provide services in 2007 so should I just go for it now? I appreciate your wisdom on this subject.
Wayne:
I've posted in the past some of my findings with Access 2007. I'll post them here for convenience. I've also encountered a new cool "feature" that I'm adding at the bottom of the list:
Overall, it should work but be prepared for a few possible headaches. First, this resource may help answer some questions as to how to find things that you're used to:
http://accessjunkie.com/faq2007.aspx
The particular things that frustrate me the most:
1) You can get your toolbars working again with a few setting changes:
http://accessjunkie.com/faq_31.aspx
However, you can no longer modify them graphically! You were able to just drag items or create new menus and so on with a few clicks that now need to be modified either by code or 3rd party tools. If you have 6 or 7 menu items with 6-10 selections each, be prepared for a lot of difficulty.
2) Exporting reports to Excel. Whoops...Microsoft removed this ability. Their work-around is to "just" create the corresponding code to export the table or query. That's fine if your database has 2 or 3 reports but if you have 40 reports and you want to be able to export any of them as needed, you're out of luck. Of course the nice grouping and totalling is gone if you do this as well unless you're into writing piles of code to do something you USED to be able to do with one click.
3) Filters. One thing that seems to have changed is how you refer to your combo boxes or whatever provides the filter data. I haven't seen this documented anywhere but I found it to be a problem.
For example:
In the past if you had a combo box (cboLastName) that you drop down to see everyone in your table whose name is Charlie:
Me.Form.Filter = "firstname= forms!frmMyForm!cboFirstName"
After people getting Access 2007, I found that this stopped working. Must have made a lot of people smile that the program they've been using for 8 years stopped working.
What I found you have to do now is use quotes:
Me.Form.Filter = "Firstname = """ & forms!frmMyForm!cboFirstName & """"
4) New useful feature: this only happens sometimes but the properties window for forms and reports can just disappear and be impossible to open. I found some code on Utter Access to use to enable it. This is something I've seen come and go with no rhyme or reason as to when or why it disappears but it's lots of fun when it does happen.
5) Last really cool thing: the time that it takes to refresh screens. I have one popup screen that "rolls" open and closed using just a few lines of code. It used to look pretty cool and take approximately 1.5 seconds for the animation. The same screen in Access 2007 - let's just say you can get a coffee and cigarette by the time it's finished. This is even on new computers with lots of RAM and good video cards.
There may be other things to be aware of but these are so far the ones I encountered
SHADOW
