VBA Help! No Index. Why?

[No helper]

I have just recently installed Office 2003 Pro SP2
Only to find that there is NO Index for the VBA help in Access
Can someone please tell me how this can happen?!

Do the designers sit around on there "Monday morning meeting"
and someone says "Hey why don't we remove the Index for the
VBA help file. No one needs it" and everyone agrees.
The decision gets passed on to their managers and it gets approved.
What the hell are these guys thinking?
Who is responsible for such a decision?
The help files have been a source of complaints for
a good number of years now.
Do they have absolutely no regard for their users?

Allen Brown (MVP) writes the following in a response to a
question in "microsoft.public.access" about the lack of the index.
"MS has received lots of complaints about that, and they have
promised to fix the problems in the next version of Access."
He is quoting from http://blogs.msdn.com/access/

What I can't understand is this.
If they have rec'd so many complaints, why can't something
that is so practical & functional, that has always been there, and
now recognized by MS as a required fix....
Why can't they issue an update to the VBA Help file?!
Afterall, we've had umpteen updates, SP1, more updates, and now SP2.

But no, we users are going to have to wait until a new version is
released and go out and BUY that. And that version will have it's own
problems.

Does this message read as though I'm angry?
Well, although I love the Office suite,
you bet your suite bippy I'm angry!

PS.
I would still like to know how a decision like this gets
made AND approved?

If I've offended anybody OTHER than those who caused this,
I apologize. I am not intending to Bash Microsoft.
Only the process by which such a blunder can be caused.

 

[Albert D.Kallal]

The loss of the index occurred when help was converted to HTML.

However, there is still a search ability for keywords.

While in ms-access, hit ctrl-g (to jump to the code editor).

Now, go help->Microsoft access help

(in fact, I always go ctrl-g, alt-h...<enter key>

At this point, you can type in your search..and you will get a index like
list....

Not perfect, but it is what I use when I converted from a97. And, believe it
or not..the a2003 help is actually much better then a97 in many cases.

For example, try not in list
you result in 2 hits...and the 2nd one of "notinlist event"

If you choose that entry, you even get a explain of the
acDataErrCoitnue..and a97 was sorely missing that constant information.
(well, it was in the help...but could only be found with great effort - the
a2003 help files are quite good, and it comes as a surprise to many that
they are often BETTER then the a97 ones).

So, while it is a change...with some experience, you will find the a2003
help quite good....

I am not trying to rose cover up something that most think is not the
best...however, give the above approach a try..and you will be pleasantly
surprised.

In addition, when you do first go help, the table of contents that shows is
rather nice, and there is a GREAT sql reference there..again something that
was missing in older versions.

And, don't forget to expand the tree for the "Microsoft Access Visual Basic
Help", as once again I find this MUCH better then the old help file..and you
can browse right down to all functions, or events....and check out the
Ennumrations (the list of constants).

You have to reailze that the help is now split between the "users + access
side", and the develoeprs side...

 

[Guest]

Access help was revised for A2000. Errors were corrected.
Updates were rolled into the help entries. Items which did not
refer to Access objects in the current version were deleted.
The Access help files had accumulated a certain amount of
clutter, including material from Access Basic, which had not
been part of Access for the better part of a decade.

This is the normal process of correction, simplification
and cleansing which is the part of normal software development.

Actually, the failure lies somewhere else. MS never worked
out a standard way to merge help files.

"Access" and "VBA" are two separate programs which are
merged and work together. Their help files are two separate
help files which are not merged and do not work together.

MS had and has a couple of different ways of merging help
files, but never a universal standard, and in the change to HTML
help all that got lost anyway.

If I read it right, I see that the general problem with merging
help files has still not been fixed, so in the next Access version,
the Access team are going to kludge a solution by including
the VBA help in the Access help.

(david)