Microsoft® Access® 2010 In Depth

19. Automating Access Applications with Macros and Procedures

During Access’s initial development, product management believed that Access 1.0’s programming language—then called Access Basic and sometimes Embedded Basic—would be difficult for new users to master and would limit sales of Microsoft’s fledgling desktop database application. Word for Windows 2.0 introduced WordBasic macros in 1991 and had gained at least a year of usage history before Access 1.0’s November 1992 release.

Despite the popularity of Word 2.0 and its embedded programming language derived from the Dartmouth BASIC language, the Access team decided to develop a declarative programming methodology, which they originally called scripts and later referred to as macros. Macros ...