Re: MS Access

From: Jim Gordon MVP (goldkey74_at_WarmerThanWarmMail.com)
Date: 01/12/05 

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:27:49 -0800

Hi Red,

If you're question is interpreted to mean, "Why doesn't Microsoft *make*
MS Access for the Mac?" then the answer is what JE McGimpsey said. The
market is too small and the product would likely be a money loser for
Microsoft. There's no sense for Microsoft to intentially lose money on a
product.

On the other hand, MS Access does have some support on the Macintosh,
although it is quite limited.

There are two ways to get at tables in Access. One way is to use ODBC
and MS Query with Excel. Using this method SQL queries can be executed
directly with Access data tables. The queries used in Access can also be
used with Excel and MS Query.
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/excel2004/using.aspx?pid=usingexcel2004&type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/how_to_articles/office2004/xl_ODBC.xml>

Another way is to synch Access data tables with Excel via a workbook
that is shared in a directory that is accessible by both Macs and PCs.
This works because MS Access can save reports and tables in Excel
format, and Excel workbooks can be shared by both Macs and PCs
simultaneously.

Things that can't be brought across are reports. You will need to
re-create reports in Excel or use a combination of Excel and Word's data
merge manager. Using Word's data merge manager is actually a much more
powerful report generating tool than the rather wimpy one within MS Access.

-Jim 

-- 
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
MVP FAQ
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;mvpfaqs>
Red Claw wrote:
> Why doesn't MS support MS Access for Macintosh?  Since I work in an
> educational environment that's mostly PC with MS Office begin the main
> suite, it would only be logical that since the PC version of MS Office
> contains MS Access for database entry, the Mac version of MS Office would
> also have MS Access.
>

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