Patrick Shaw’s Weblog

Access 2007 is a significant upgrade - it will offer some terrific new features and fixes and most Access 2003 applications will work in 2007 - but there is a catch:

• Some previous applications may break or cause unexpected behavior
• So much has changed, that Access 2007 might be confusing for those used to previous versions of Access
• Although 2007 will work with your existing Access file in the 2003 format (Access 2003 files have a file extension that end with .mdb) if you upgrade to the new file format (.accdb) you won’t be able to open your database in older versions of Access
• The two versions of access don’t play well together on the same computer
• Like any major software release - there will be bugs that need to be fixed

So - here’s what we recommend:

If you don’t use Access now, and are upgrading - go ahead and use Access 2007 for your future needs. however, if you do use Access 2003 or earlier now (particularly if it is crucial piece of software, such as a donor database, or a client tracking database, or a volunteer database that is critical to your mission) the we recommend that that you DON’T install Access 2007.

You can choose to use the other Office 2007 tools - just don’t install Access 2007, or until you’ve worked with a database expert to ensure that your database will work in the new format!

Special thanks to NPower Seattle’s senior consultant, Evan Callahan for compiling this important information - and for additional reading, follow these links:

http://allenbrowne.com/Access2007.html
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb203849.aspx
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/1dce641e-ba1c-446a-8ff2-221769a58ba51033.mspx?mfr=true