Access going away? (1 Viewer)

[CedarTree]

There is talk at my company of Microsoft slowly supporting MS Access less and less (not sure I believe that) and/or our IT dept supporting it only through say 2026. What are you hearing? And what alternatives are out there that allows for connecting to SQL server data, user-friendly forms, and coding to manipulate data and calculations, etc. Thanks!

 

[Isaac]

Oh man so many of these threads. I almost want to say just search AWF but not sure that's fair as fresh discussion is never a bad thing, really. Except for you run into grumpy people like me

I would say Microsoft has ALWAYS fielded complaints of not prioritizing Access well at all, but sure it has increased in recent years - although not necessarily in the current year, as they rolled out some improvements recently if i'm not mistaken. It wasn't enough to keep me working much in Access, because the concurrent increase in everyone working from home over wifi really cramped my Access style.

It is true that Microsoft seems to secretly wish Access would die in favor of so-called "no code" or "low code" alternatives (which also can do virtually nothing Access can do with a few exceptions you can name on one hand almost....and, in all fairness, can also do 1000 things Access will never do, such as full integration with O365 and all of your company colleagues' corporate Microsoft accounts and emails and identities and auto-notifications and sharepoint).

At the end of the day, IF you have a sql server back end, and IF you have a small FE file, you can probably get away with good successful Access development for years to come.

Your IT dept is a different story. There are very good reasons why "I.T. hates Access", (as I call it), and most of them relate to poor development and has been fully earned by the I-develop-in-Access-as-a-hobby-but-my-business-relies-on-it-as-if-I-were-serious community, which unfortunately both exists and is of substantial size.

possibly fun reading - especially if you've been doing this long enough to relate to all of them:

Tips For Newbies

Hi, I have been an enthusiastic amateur for about 5 years & a keen forum follower for the past 12 months or so and thought I may be able to pass on some tips that I’ve learnt from a newbie’s perspective. For background, my first exposure to ‘databases' was at a company I worked for, where they...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

is microsoft access still used at your company

I work in IT and i'm supposed to not like access, but it holds a place for me because it is what got me into databases about 10 yrs ago. In spite of all the heat it takes, it def has plenty of use cases but takes a lot of heat from developers. I've seen bad and good come out of access, but more...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

 

[June7]

I have been hearing that for 20 years and MS keeps producing new version. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...upported/3ea4da8b-2546-4b95-8070-2731c8ae5612

You can code interface with .Net and many other products.

 

[Isaac]

I agree with June, but I do perceive that the struggle between "What does Access offer and what are the challenges" versus "what is the modern, current-day typical corporate business environment" actually has gotten worse.

From versions (beginning) to (around 2007, 2010), everything was basically the same. Access offered a LOT compared to the average business with a LAN and people sitting in a cubicle and not much emphasis on O365 identities and Microsoft Business Account identity management.

Now that few (and constantly fewer) people are on a LAN sitting in a cubicle, and now that Microsoft has conscripted most corporate entities into an overwhelmingly absolute state of microsoft identities at work - Teams, power-everything, Access management controlled by microsoft account, O365.......it's become significantly harder to sell Access' benefits in that environment. People can much more easily see the benefits offered by Power Automate and Flow - because of that environment, even though objectively speaking, we all know a desktop app can do 1000 things that power automate and a bunch of formula-like statements cannot.

It's getting a lot harder IMO, IF you have the perspective of a variety of companies but for those who target in-person, physically present small businesses, I think Access is still a great career. Just getting to be a smaller niche...

 

[MarkK]

I'm hearing that 9/11 was an inside job, that aliens landed in Nevada in 1958, and that Donald Trump is Jesus Christ's brother, chosen of God to bring light into the world.

I haven't heard this news about Access though. That sounds serious.

 

[AccessBlaster]

There are very good reasons why "I.T. hates Access", (as I call it), and most of them relate to poor development and has been fully earned by the I-develop-in-Access-as-a-hobby-but-my-business-relies-on-it-as-if-I-were-serious community, which unfortunately both exists and is of substantial size.

That, and IT fears anything that can run in automation or in a macro as a security risk.

 

[Isaac]

I'm hearing that 9/11 was an inside job, that aliens landed in Nevada in 1958, and that Donald Trump is Jesus Christ's brother, chosen of God to bring light into the world.

I haven't heard this news about Access though. That sounds serious.

I started watching Roswell on Netflix and I was nearly convinced until the blood turned out to be a ketchup bottle in S1E1

 

[Isaac]

That, and IT fears anything that can run in automation or in a macro as a security risk.

good point. access developers exist in that nebulous area between end-user and formally chartered big I.T. Systems apps, and that area makes I.T. very nervous with good reason, they seek to minimize that risk constantly.

 

[GPGeorge]

There is talk at my company of Microsoft slowly supporting MS Access less and less (not sure I believe that) and/or our IT dept supporting it only through say 2026. What are you hearing? And what alternatives are out there that allows for connecting to SQL server data, user-friendly forms, and coding to manipulate data and calculations, etc. Thanks!

The rumors that Access was going to be deprecated actually started shortly after the first IT manager realized ANYBODY with a desktop computer could create their own database.That would have been approximately one week after Access was launched in 1992. That's right, we're celebrating 30 years of Access.

Well-meaning, but naïve, people repeat the rumors constantly, unfortunately.

That 2026 date probably refers to the end of support date for some particular version of MS 365, which includes Access. There is just enough truth there to provide an excuse to re-launch the rumor.

That said, software constantly evolves; Microsoft's revenue is more and more driven by the "cloud" services rather than Office products and services. It's logical to expect more development effort to go in that direction. But it's not a zero-sum situation. Access and its sister products are not going to be thrown out to satisfy the angst of IT managers who have their own turf to protect.

 

[AccessBlaster]

It's a catch-22 for the novice database developer, on one hand, the novice is trying to help his fellow employees while saving the business some money. On the other hand, he is despised by IT and pro developers universally. It's a no-win situation and contributes to the decline of Access in general.

 

[Isaac]

It's a catch-22 for the novice database developer, on one hand, the novice is trying to help his fellow employees while saving the business some money. On the other hand, he is despised by IT and pro developers universally. It's a no-win situation and contributes to the decline of Access in general.

well said. all i can contribute is my personal experience. in about 2004 a sql server dev sat down with me and my managers and said out loud, "the things Isaac is doing are dangerous". he then explained basically what we have already said - but somewhat more complimentary, at least he focused on the fact that "if isaac gets hit by a bus tomorrow there is nobody else in this division who does advanced vba programming".

i spoke my piece and he spoke his, and wisely (or luckily?) at the time I convinced my manager to simply ensure we didn't store any can't-live-without back end data in Access (this was before I was even granted sql access for ANYTHING), and I focused my efforts on "workflow"-apps, things that organized various departments' workflow and as such stored some data but was never considered the source of truth for anything - and I found a nice in between to 'grow' for a few years until I was trusted and ultimately patched into those systems groups that had despised me for a while.

it is, indeed, a complex journey to navigate if you're in the corporate world. you have to be just humble enough at least to not anger I.T. any more than they already are but driven enough to keep learning until you can get a position IN the group that used to gatekeep-you out.

Or, as I said, stick to the [usually smaller] companies where Access is well received, wherein lies many great careers, still, for sure.

 

[NauticalGent]

I was once having coffee with a few of the IT folks when they were setting up an instance one their SQL Server. One of them said "Access? NO ONE uses Access anymore!"

I asked him what do they use since Access is all but extinct. He said "SharePoint!"

I said "Great, and since we all have access to SharePoint, who do you have that can replicate the app over 300 people of an 800 person staff uses on a daily basis?"

That was 6 years ago and I am still waiting on an answer and getting fat from eating all those snickers...

The app is still alive and kicking, BTW.

 

[Isaac]

Love it. Yeah I've seen Sharepoint Developers try to replicate with great effort and pride the absolute most simplest of what could be an Access form - literally, the simplest imaginable.

One thing I did find I liked about sharepoint calculated columns is that you can test them using the exact same syntax as an Excel formula.

=if(or(and(one thing, another thing),another thing),true,false)

which is a nice testing benefit compared to the test of looking at the sharepoint view scratching your head and silently cursing

 

[NauticalGent]

which is a nice testing benefit compared to the test of looking at the sharepoint view scratching your head and silently cursing

 

[561414]

I don't work for Microsoft, but I suppose it's a numbers game. Access is here now because there are enough people using it. It has its problems, like everything else, but it's good for creating quick solutions and if someone has a copy of Office, chances are Access will be installed, which is convenient, but if you want to protect your stuff before distribution, then good luck mate.

I don't like the fact that if you want your application to have nice animations, top security, web deployment, fancy styling, control customization, mobile versions, etc... you're on your own and you end up choosing another platform. And even though Access is very mature and reliable in local environments, if you have wifi issues then bye bye multi-user capabilities, that's also bad.

But if it's going to be used by small teams with wired internet access and they don't care about having data on the web or having a fancy looking application, then it's fantastic. You don't have to worry about connection strings or creating databases on a terminal, you don't even have to worry about web servers being attacked 24/7 or paying for databases online, much less worrying about which one of the 9,676 technologies is best for your use case, or how many programming languages you have to speak to interconnect it all, you just do your thing with VBA, not even SQL because the query builder is fantastic (try to use an online query builder, good luck mate).

But if you do care, then go for web development, particularly with React for front end, some ORM for back end, or you can go comando and use MySQL alone, or MS SQL, or mariaDB, MongoDB, Firebase, you name it. Just keep in mind you'll have to worry about where to host your stuff at some point and how to protect it, because it WILL be attacked as soon as it's up, regardless of what you choose. That's why Access is good, that's why it's bad.

 

[MajP]

The future of Access

It is once again a central part of the MS Office strategy. This seems curious to me, many times Microsoft doesn't even include Access in their adverts. Excel, Word and PowerPoint seem central Access feels like an after thought.

www.access-programmers.co.uk

 

[Isaac]

Sometimes I picture this funny caricature with everyone asking "is Access going to keep coming back?"
and Microsoft coming around the bend of the road with something they call "Access" dressed in no-code garments without the VBA project and colored suspiciously in all-Purple saying, "SURE - HERE IT IS ACCESS 2024!"

lol ... just some humor, nothing serious there

 

[CedarTree]

Thanks everyone - great insight.
If you HAD to give up Access tomorrow... what would you go to. that you think IT would support? Visual Studio? Something else?

 

[NauticalGent]

Thanks everyone - great insight.
If you HAD to give up Access tomorrow... what would you go to. that you think IT would support? Visual Studio? Something else?

A well re-known and respected MVP has decided to go with PhP. I myself will stay the course - I am close to retirement age and I am not too proud to stock shelves at Home Depot!

 

[CJ_London]

I don't like the fact that if you want your application to have nice animations, top security, web deployment, fancy styling, control customization, mobile versions, etc... you're on your own and you end up choosing another platform.

In response - I don't like the fact that if you want your application to have nice animations, top security, web deployment, fancy styling, control customization, mobile versions, etc... you're on your own and you end up choosing another platform which has a steep learning curve and significantly longer development times.