Please fix the combo box RowSource datatype binding bug.

The bug is as follows:
1. Create a table [Table1] with two columns:
- [NumberField], datatype: Number, Double
- [TextField], datatype: Short Text

Add 1 Row to the table:
[NumberField] = 10
[TextField] = "Some Text 10"

2. Create a combo box:
- Set the RowSource of the combo box to this:
SELECT NumberField, TextField FROM Table1;

3. Add a Button to the form: [cmbErrorExample]
Add On Click Event:
If Me.cmbErrorExample.RowSource = "SELECT NumberField, TextField FROM Table1;" Then
Me.cmbErrorExample.RowSource = "SELECT TextField, NumberField FROM Table1;"
Me.cmbErrorExample.DefaultValue = "Some Text 10"
Me.cmbErrorExample.Value = "Some Text 10"
Else
Me.cmbErrorExample.RowSource = "SELECT NumberField, TextField FROM Table1;"
Me.cmbErrorExample.DefaultValue = 10
Me.cmbErrorExample.Value = 10
End If

Now open the form:
Drop the combo box, you should see the one row with values:
10 | Some Text 10
Select the row - the value of the field becomes 10.

Now, click the button. The Rowsource should change to:
"SELECT TextField, NumberField FROM Table1;"

However, if the user has already made a selection as instructed above, error appers:
---------------------------
Error Occurred in Sub cmdToggleRowSource_Click of Module Form_Form1
---------------------------
Error The value you entered isn't valid for this field.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Expected: the code should be able to programmatically change the Rowsource of the combo box.

Actual: Because the unbound field has had a numeric value assigned as a value, the programmatic change of the RowSource of the combo box to a text value results in a type mismatch that should not be happening.

This used to be possible in Access 2003, but in Access 2019 the combo box appears to change itself to be bound to a numeric data type, even though it is an UNBOUND field.

This is a problem when creating forms that change combo box data sources programmatically.

This URL contains a .accdb with a sample form that demonstrates the issue:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhezOlimTLoah-V27m77K4MRlU5loQ

Every time I get an Office update, my Access Add-ins are uninstalled. This has been going on for at least a year. It doesn't affect all add-ins, about 1/4 of them stay (I have 26 installed). These may be ones that were installed with an .exe installer.

I think this is a bug but I don't think it will get a lot of attention because Access Add-ins aren't that popular. If you use add-ins and have seen this happen please vote.

My work around for this has been to use RegEdit to save my add-in registry settings to a .reg file. After I get an Office update, I open a File Explorer window as Administrator and then merge the .reg file. This will restore my add-ins without having to open Access as Administrator and Installing each one from the Add-ins Manager.

The registry path on my computer is:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Access\Menu Add-Ins]

I am using Office 365 (16.0.10730.20264) 32-bit

MS Access's ACE SQL engine continues to run with a variant form of ANSI-89 with some ANSI-92 features while the rest of the relational database world has adopted more recent ANSI standards and at the very least fully comply to the universal, lowest common denominator standard accepted in the industry: ANSI-1992.

Being a highly used, worldwide database for small to medium-sized shops and its popularity with the Office suite, enhancing Access's dialect to industry standards will add value to current and future users including the Microsoft brand. Even SQLite, a similar, very popular file-level database as open-source counterpart to Access, has a richer, more expressive updated SQL dialect.

Such specific features that would greatly enhance the expressiveness, portability, and efficiency of Access queries would include:

ANSI-1992

- Support of other joins - FULL OUTER JOIN, NATURAL JOIN, and CROSS JOIN; with use of USING clause;
- Support of CASE statements as more enhanced, portable version than IIF() especially for nested logic;
- Support of distinct aggregate functions: COUNT (DISTINCT ...), AVG (DISTINCT ...), SUM (DISTINCT ...);
- Support of wildcards operator, %, in GUI rather than * or use of ALIKE or restricted to ODBC/OLEDB queries;
- Support of CAST for data type changes as opposed to the non-portable C-functions: CStr, CDbl, CLong, CDate, etc.;
- Support of COALESCE for handling of NULL across columns as opposed to nested IIF(..IS NULL) or NZ();
- Elimination of the parentheses requirements for more than one JOIN which often frustrate many new users and require the use of Access GUI's Design View to build complex queries;
- Support of ON clause conditions on single table fields rather than joining tables first and then running WHERE.

Other ANSI

- ANSI-1999: Common Table Expressions (CTE) using WITH clause for more readable, maintainable, and less repetitive SQL code than subqueries and derived tables (supported in SQLite as of version 3.8.3, released 2014-02-03);
- ANSI-2003: Window functions using OVER and PARTITION BY clauses to supplant the domain (DSum, DMax, DCount, etc.) functions with more efficiency than correlated subqueries (supported in SQLite as of version 3.25, released 2018-09-15);
- ANSI-2003: Support for MERGE statement for synchronous UPDATE and INSERT needs based on conditional logic.

Other recommendations

- Support of EXPLAIN <QUERY> to allow users evaluate query operations especially use of indexes;
- Support of CREATE DATABASE as opposed to requiring code for creating .mdb/.accdb files;
- Support of CREATE TABLE AS instead of only SELECT * INTO for clarity of DDL action;
- Support of CREATE VIEW AS instead of requiring code with QueryDefs for creating stored queries;
- Distribute the ACE engine (.dll) as a shared object (.so) with CLI (similar to SQLite) for Unix (Mac, Linux) users (e.g., SQL Server 2016/2017 is now supported on Linux).

With backwards compatibility, above changes is a challenge but such features can be integrated with newer versions of the ACE engine (.dll) to be distributed to users, or with add-on patches, or entirely new Access version.

Additionally, though Microsoft strategically intends to keep SQL Server as its flagship database system and upgrading Access may somewhat interfere with this objective, arguably Access can be situated as a complement and not substitute to the enterprise server RDBMS. Rather than advancing Access’ front end GUI features for use as a complement to Excel, consider strengthening MS Access as a standalone, small-scale database engine product.

I have a report which sorts on the sort field alphabetically, but I do not want this. I need to define that the following sort is carried out but I can only sort in an ascending or descending order without adding a lookup to another table or altering my item names containing the following:

In progress
Not started
Ongoing
Waiting for someone else

If I sort alphabetically they end up as

In Progress
Ongoing
Not Started
Waiting for someone else.

Not started is more important to me than ongoing, so I would like it to appear before Ongoing, but the only way I can do this currently is by calling each line:

1 In progress
2 Not Started
3 Ongoing
4 Waiting...

which isn't a very aesthetically pleasing solution.

Please could you enable (or publicise how to) allowing custom sort orders.

Thank you,

When the Linked Table Manager sees a column name in a SQL Server table with 64 characters, it only uses the first 63 characters of that column name.

After linking, an attempt to view table data will fail, with the message

"ODBC--call failed"

"[Microsoft][ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server][SQL Server]Invalid column name "'123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123'."

The column name in my table on SQL Server is:

"1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234"

So Linked Table manager is truncating that for some reason.

There is a 64 character limit for object names.

I cannot find any documentation anywhere saying there is such a limit of 63 characters in ODBC linked tables.

Same issue with ODBC v17 (v17.3) as well as ODBC v13.

The version of SQL Server is SQL Server 2017, on Windows 10 Pro. The version of MS Access is from Office 365, (Access Version 1903), and is installed on the same Windows 10 Pro instance as the SQL Server is using. For the Linked Table manager, my results are the same whether using the Windows Integration authentication as the SQL Server (login) authentication.

Sizeable MDI forms in Access 2016 have a single-pixel border that is very hard to grab with the mouse.

The form borders show as a single-pixel whether the form mode is "no border", "dialog", "sizable" or "thin".

One work-around is to make the form a popup form, but if you make every single form in the database popup, you lose the MDI functionality and the ability to have a genuine popup form. When everything is on top then effectively nothing is.

This creates a serious accessibility issue particularly when combined with the fact that MS Access forms and controls don't resize correctly when the Windows text size/DPI is altered.