Microsoft Visual Studio

[CrazyAccessProgrammer]

In versions of Microsoft Office prior to Office 2007, I used to purchase
Microsoft Visual Studio for the Packaging (msi) feature and Runtime version
of Access.

With Microsoft Office 2007, both the packaging feature and runtime versions
of access are free downloads.

Are there any useful features of Microsoft Visual Studio that are useful for
an Access developer to have?

I've mulled over the website and can't really seem to determine anything.

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/default.mspx

 

[Larry Linson]

Are there any useful features of Microsoft Visual Studio that
are useful for an Access developer to have?

Generally speaking, no, there are not any. The DotNet environment that
current editions of Visual Studio supports is a different generation of
development tool. Access is excellent for individual applications,
modest-sized multiuser workgroups, and creating front end / user interface
for client-server applications running on a LAN.

Visual Studio applications can address a much broader targer audience, up to
an including huge, web-based enteprise distributed processing applications.
The earlier "developer editions" of Office did have a few ActiveX Controls
that some found useful. But, I've never read anyone complain about the lack
of ActiveX Controls -- and they complicated the distribution process. By the
way, you never had to purchase the Visual Studio Tools for Office in order
to have the full features and functions of Access -- only the runtime. Word
and Excel can use the Visual Basic.Net and C# languages features of Visual
Studio Tools for Office, but Access cannot.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP

 

[CrazyAccessProgrammer]

Hey thanks for your reply somehow I missed your reply until now. Thanks for
the info!

In the past I purchased Visual Studios for access runtime and the packaging
wizard... I was under the impression back then, that that was the only way to
get those tools.