I’ve been developing database solutions using Azure SQL as a cloud-based database for a few years now. The combination of the local functionality afforded by Access coupled with the ability to share data across the internet has proved very powerful.
Recently I have been looking at adding the ability to reference documents from an online database and have run into a brick wall. Despite the fact that the Azure online services and Office are both Microsoft products, the two just don’t seem to be able to work together.
I have scoured the internet for clues and have tried a number of approaches but have so far drawn a blank – it just doesn’t seem to be possible. I can also see that plenty of others have posted questions asking for similar solutions. I can download a file that has been previously uploaded using some other tool but I just can’t get VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) via Access to be able to upload a file to the same service.
Why is this?
I think it is simply that Office and its programming language (VBA), are stuck in the 1990’s. Although there have been frequent updates of the Office suite of products (the most recent being 2016) behind the scenes little has changed. I don’t think there’s been any update to the VBA language since Office 2000. This means that all of the various services that have come forward since 1999 (Office 2000 was released end of 1999) are not supported in VBA.
Microsoft seem to be really keen to get users of every other flavour of programming language and device (including Apple’s iOS) to use its Azure service, but since Office users are already in the Microsoft fold, there’s really no need to target them. The irony is, of course, that users of Apple would use anything else before a Microsoft service!
So what’s going on?
Anybody who uses Microsoft software must have noticed that new versions often seem to be completely at odds with what the users actually want. For some time I thought that the reason for this is that Microsoft either doesn’t have or doesn’t use its marketing department. But I no longer think this is the case. I think that Microsoft has become like a political party.
Let me explain. Over the years, political parties have come to realise that in order to win elections they need to focus on the ‘floating voter’. Most people will always vote for the same party at every election because they identify with a particular political philosophy. A floating voter, however, will vote for whichever party seems the best option now.
Political parties have started to largely ignore their membership and core voters because they will vote for the party anyway. Instead they focus their efforts on those who can be persuaded to switch their vote. Similarly Microsoft knows that its core customers aren’t likely to leave, so it focuses its efforts on those users and gadgets that currently aren’t using Office and Windows.
OK, so it’s not such a silly strategy. However, unlike a political party, Microsoft could give its users support for using its software and options on how it works. Surely this is not beyond Microsoft’s programming abilities and maybe there might be some advantage to not constantly ignoring your core customer base. Just a thought.