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.

A Ribbon Class - Another approach to using the new ribbon in your applications

Much has been written about the new "Office Fluent User Interface" that has been introduced with Office 2007. Also known as the ribbon, it's a whole new way to work with Access, Word, Excel and Powerpoint, replacing the menus and command bars we've all become accustomed to.

Like them or not as a user, Access developers have to deal with the reality that the custom command bars they have been using in their applications the past don't work the way they used to.

In this article Albert Kallal presents a neat approach to solving the problem of having your application interact with the ribbon. He's created a ribbon class which uses methods similar to the old command bar methods to operate on icons within the ribbon. I haven't tried using it in an application yet, but I ran the demo and it looks pretty neat.

See also: my other ribbon posts.

Adding Tabs and Controls to the Office Fluent Ribbon in Access 2007

Here's a "visual how-to" from Microsoft on adding to the Access 2007 Ribbon..   #

Ribbon customization: repurposing commands

Here's another post from the MS-Access team on working with the Office 2007 ribbon in Access.

Allen Browne on Converting to Access 2007

Access Team Blog Posts On Working With The Ribbon in 2007

The Office 2007 ribbon seems to be a source of frustration for some developers. I haven't tried it yet (I have 2007 but I haven't done any development there- I just converted a couple of simple databases) but these posts make it look not so hard.

Customizing the New Access UI
Creating item templates for Ribbon customizations to use in Visual Studio
Ribbon Customization - Closing the Currently Open Object
Ribbon Customization: Filling Dropdown Lists
Ribbon Customization: Repurposing Commands
And here's the tag search for their Blog since I'm sure there are more to come!