Access™ 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

3.1. Who Benefits

Access 2007 offers significant benefits to four major user types: the end user, the power user, the IT department, and the developer. When looking at the benefits of upgrading, it's important to focus on what is relevant to the particular audience.

3.1.1. The End User

The new look and feel of Access has an instant appeal to end users, especially if they are familiar with Excel or other Office programs. New users can hit the ground running by selecting from a growing list of templates that provide ready-to-use, customizable solutions. And the combination of the new navigation pane and the Ribbon make it easy to find and use the tools that are germane to the current task. The user interface is context sensitive, displays relevant commands and options, and requires few drop-down menus. It's a dramatic change, so expect to need some time to get used to it. Once you become adept with the new UI, the payoffs make it worth the effort.

In Access 2007, both forms and reports offer WYSIWYG design changes. Split forms enable users to scroll thorough lists in Datasheet view and simultaneously see the details of a selected record in a form. The new column summary allows users to quickly show calculated fields and includes such options as the sum or the minimum or maximum value—no VBA required. And finally, Access has built-in filter, find, and sort capabilities comparable to those found in Excel. With Office 2007, the filtering options change according to the field type, ...