Thursday, November 19, 2009

Macros and Access 2007: What happened to all the extra Macro Actions in Access 2007?

"Access Junkie" has a quick tip here about macros in Access 2007: What happened to all the extra Macro Actions in Access 2007? When I drop down the list of macro actions in the macro design window, I do not see all the options present in previous versions. Where are they?

Access 2007's security enhancements include a distinction between trusted mode and non-trusted mode. It seems some Macro actions are allowed when your database is running in trusted mode, while some aren't. By default Access only shows you the trusted actions. The article shows you how to see the rest.

There's an overview of what else changes depending on whether your database is trusted or not here: How database objects behave when trusted and untrusted and an overview of the new security provisions in Access 2007 here: Get started with Access 2007 security

Until Access 2007 most serious Access developers believed that macros were rarely the right way to go- that VBA was a better choice. There's a article here from UtterAcess.com that reviews the differences: Macros vs VBA - Why use Macros? With the introduction of trusted and non-trusted mode and some additional capabilities in macros in Access 2007, it seems there may be a case for macros after all- I'll have to explore the new features and see if they provide enough functionality to create an application. There's a review of the additional macro features here: New macro features in Office Access 2007.

1 comment:

Access Training said...

Very interesting, I have just written some Access Training tips about the new features in Microsoft Access 2010, I thought you might find this interesting and maybe be able to add a few of your own?