The Everlasting Relevance of Microsoft Access in the Modern World

For over three decades, Microsoft Access has been a reliable tool for businesses, developers, and data professionals. Despite the rise of cloud-based database solutions and enterprise-level database management systems, Microsoft Access continues to thrive in various industries. This blog post will explore why Access continues to be a practical solution, especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and government organizations.

A Long and Successful History

First released in November 1992, Microsoft Access was designed to be user-friendly, offering a graphical user interface (GUI) that allowed users to create tables, forms, and complex queries without needing extensive programming knowledge. Access quickly became a popular choice for small to medium-sized businesses and individual users.

Here are some key milestones in its evolution:

1992-1997: Initial versions focused on bug fixes and establishing a user-friendly interface. Access 97 was a successful standard version.
1998-2007: Introduction of web integration, improved security, replication, and database connectivity tools. Access 2007 brought a new file format (ACCDB) and the Ribbon GUI.
2010-Present: Enhanced integration with Microsoft SharePoint, SQL Server, continued updates through Office 365 with a focus on cloud connectivity and data analysis. The latest version of Microsoft Access is Access 2021, as of February 2025.

Microsoft has supported Access 2016 through at least 2025, with new versions released alongside major Microsoft Office updates. The latest version, Access 2021, introduces new features such as an add tables pane, improved tab management, hex color support, and the Edge Browser control.

The Secret to Its Success

So, what keeps this venerable software relevant in 2025 and beyond? And why do I continue to use it personally and professionally?

Technological Low Barrier to Entry

If you work for a business, and especially if you work for the government, there may be restrictions on what software you’re allowed to use. The fact that Access is included with Microsoft 365 means that it’s ready to go on day one because Microsoft 365 is likely already installed by your organization. There is no “red tape” involved with getting something new approved from the plethora of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software packages. And the scrutiny that would come with developing a brand-new piece of software would almost surely be a non-starter.

Whereas, when you develop an Access database, it’s not the all-encompassing “software development” like that of a new executable file with perhaps some new Dynamic Linked Libraries (DLLs), Windows Registry Keys, etc. Rather, Access development is analogous to opening Excel and creating content in the rows and columns of a spreadsheet within the overall Excel Workbook file. Access, the application, is the already approved executable. The database with its tables, queries, forms, and reports is the content within the Access file. There’s no need for permission to create an Access database file just like there would be no need to ask for permission to create a new Excel workbook.

Go ahead and see if you have Access on your computer right this moment. If you’re on a Windows machine (which is a lot of people), you probably do. And if you don’t, you can get it quickly and be ready to roll.

Cost-Effective Database Management

Related to the technological low barrier to entry, there’s the accompanying low financial barrier. For small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), non-profits, and government offices, Microsoft Access provides an affordable solution for managing data. Unlike enterprise databases that require expensive licenses, dedicated IT staff, and extensive training, Access is included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions and offers a user-friendly interface that requires minimal setup.

A Bridge Between Excel and Enterprise Databases

Many businesses outgrow Excel but do not yet require a full-fledged enterprise database like SQL Server or Oracle. Microsoft Access serves as the perfect intermediate solution, allowing companies to store more complex data while still maintaining an easy-to-use interface.

In fact, chances are you have Excel workbooks that have outgrown their utility in their present format. You can usually tell when there are extended delays during recalculations and/or when you’re wasting time going through all of the spreadsheets, rows, and columns. Just because Excel worksheets technically have a cell address at XFD1048576 does not mean that in practical terms you’ll ever be able to use a workbook with 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows.

Rapid Application Development (RAD)

Microsoft Access is one of the fastest ways to build and deploy custom applications. Just like opening Word and typing out a document or opening Excel and quickly performing calculations, you can open Access and get right to creating content. With built-in wizards, drag-and-drop functionality, and the ability to create complex queries without needing advanced SQL knowledge, users can quickly develop business applications tailored to their needs. This makes it an excellent choice for small projects, prototypes, and internal tools.

There are numerous times when I’ve gotten the database up and running using the built-in wizards. I personally don’t think that what the wizards produce are the best-looking creations, especially considering what I’m accustomed to developing in regard to finished product polish. However, they’re recognized as just being the start of things. I can work with those forms and reports, as unpolished as they may be, until there’s time to refine them and improve their functionality. Sometimes you must get the database into action and reap the benefits of it with presentation being a minor consideration.

An Access Wizard won't build you a form like this, but a little work and creativity can produce complex forms with navigation sidebars, one-to-many item sub-forms, and plenty of actionable buttons.

The importance of RAD is even more evident when time is of the essence. When Space Shuttle Columbia broke up upon reentry that fateful February day in 2003, the recovery efforts went into immediate action. As one of the Structures Engineers at NASA KSC, we were responsible for identifying the pieces of hardware, tagging them, and locating them on “the grid.” A database was built to aid with cataloging the hardware. RAD played a part in this. As hardware was being delivered, do you think there would have been time to stand up a “database requirements document” review board? Have meeting after meeting flushing out the details of the overall finished product before seeking approval and beginning development? No, it was built on-the-fly as the need arose with a focus on immediate priorities with new data tables and fields being added over time.

Seamless Integration with Microsoft Office

One of the key strengths of Access is its deep integration with the Microsoft ecosystem. Businesses that rely on Excel, Outlook, SharePoint, and SQL Server can easily transfer and manipulate data within Access. This seamless connectivity ensures that companies can continue using their familiar tools without requiring a complete overhaul of their systems.

The integration with other Microsoft Office applications, via Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), is one of the hidden strengths of Access. While it’s possible to have Access generate full reports using its GUI, the control that comes with Access manipulating Excel workbooks, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and/or Outlook emails (sometimes all at once!) is amazing. This control allows for more complex content creation, logic-driven processes (if [condition] then do [action]), and end-to-end automation. This level of integration and automation simply isn’t possible with the competitive online and desktop applications (Airtable, Open Office, etc.).

As a quick example, I’ve had Access run through a batch of 72 document creations – Emergency Plans – for Booz Allen Hamilton where each needed to be customized based on the risks associated with the geographic location of each site and office building including insertion of pictures showing emergency marshaling areas. The content was queried from multiple linked SharePoint lists for specific risks, points of contact, local media sources, and more. As each office’s Emergency Plan was completed, Access saved the finished product to the SharePoint Library and moved on to the next one. What used to take the team MONTHS to do by hand was automatically completed by Access over a few hours. This example is one of my early Advanced Office Analysis and Automation (AOAA) solutions.

Flexibility and Customization

Access allows users to create custom forms, reports, and queries that suit specific business requirements. Unlike rigid, off-the-shelf software, it gives organizations full control over how they structure and analyze their data, ensuring better adaptability to changing needs.

This is especially important when it comes to user acceptance. Given a choice between trying to fit your business data and processes into a rigid COTS application, Access gives you the ability to build everything around the business – specific terminology, data relationships, branded look-and-feel, and more. Users will be more accepting if they see familiar terms and follow familiar processes.

"CMR", "QT", "COR", and "Rod-Bot" are business-specific terms that can be used in this custom-built form, complete with retro "Knight Rider" Turbo Boost button.

And when it comes to changing needs, which are inevitable, you have the choice between asking your COTS company to make a change for you or you just doing it yourself. For the COTS company, their response will likely be “We’ll consider it in the next release” or “Sure, that change order will cost you $$$$$.”

I remember one Air Force client who was comparing our Access database solution’s flexibility to another product built by another company. They shared their frustrations involved in making a requested change, probably requested by a General, and that they couldn’t achieve this on their own because the company that built the product had locked everything down. To accommodate the request and implement the change, the Air Force had to pay for a company representative to fly down to Patrick Air Force Base in Florida just so that this rep could type in the “secret password”. That’s not prompt and cost-free flexibility.

Multi-User Capabilities and Scalability

While Microsoft Access is primarily designed for small-scale applications, it does support multi-user environments through linked tables and shared network databases. Furthermore, businesses that outgrow Access can transition to SQL Server, as Access databases can be easily upscaled without significant redevelopment.

While multi-user setups can be established on network drives with a split database (front end with the forms and the back end holding the tables), my preferred multi-user environment utilizes SQL Server, especially if working with larger datasets. For smaller datasets that don’t require the use of stored procedures or other SQL Server functionality, it’s possible to have a very functional multi-user Access database linked to SharePoint lists.

While Access has a local file size limitation of 2GB (4GB now for 64-bit systems), that’s still huge and nothing I’ve ever come close to reaching as a limitation. This size limitation is not a disqualifying characteristic of Access because of its Big Data Management. Microsoft has added data connectors for SharePoint, Salesforce, Amazon Redshift, SQL Server, Azure, and more. When you have that much data to work with, it’s best to place it in an environment that can handle it and then let Access forms and reports serve as the user-friendly graphical interface and data displays.

Ideal for Niche Applications

Many industries rely on Microsoft Access for niche applications where larger database solutions would be overkill. Some real-world examples of Access in use include:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: Automating customer data entry, marketing progress notes, next action tracking, generating sales reports, and integrating with Outlook for follow-up emails.
Inventory Management Systems: Tracking real-time inventory levels, alerting users to low stock, and linking with barcode scanning for fast data entry.
Project Management & Task Tracking: Managing projects, deadlines, budgets, and employee tasks, generating project timelines and financial reports, and providing a visual dashboard for project health.
Medical Patient Records Systems: Managing patient records, appointments, and billing securely, allowing quick data retrieval.
Event Planning and Registration Systems: Automating email confirmations and ticket generation, tracking payment status, and generating post-event reports.
Small Business Financial & Invoice Management: Generating professional invoices, tracking payments, and linking with Excel for financial forecasting.
Membership & Subscription Management: Automating renewal reminders, generating reports on active members, and tracking payment history.
Technical data collection and reporting: Tables collecting detailed technical data, performing analysis, and generating reports.
Multi-user data collection: Replacing the inefficient process of emailing contributions from multiple people to somebody who must manually aggregate these contributions together, everybody instead submits their contributions to a centralized data source for immediate analysis and reporting.
Kiosk: Specifically designed system focusing on providing users with on-demand text/images/audio/video, potentially collecting inputs from the user (e.g. digital visitor log, mailing list registration, etc.)
Point Of Sale: Combined with handheld scanners and a touch screen interface, Access forms could effectively serve POS systems for restaurants, retail, hospitality, and more.

Longevity and Stability

Unlike many short-lived software solutions that come onto the scene with a catchy marketing campaign, Microsoft Access has stood the test of time. Organizations that invested in Access decades ago still use it today, a testament to its reliability and robustness. "Apps Run The World" has data on the widespread adoption of Access in the workplace.

https://www.appsruntheworld.com/customers-database/products/view/microsoft-access

As of this writing, this is the distribution of Access use across various industries:

Manufacturing (44.0%)
Consumer Packaged Goods (20.0%)
Automotive (8.0%)
Professional Services (4.0%)
Life Sciences (4.0%)
Insurance (4.0%)
Distribution (4.0%)
Retail (4.0%)
Government (4.0%)
Banking and Financial Services (4.0%)

Then there are also proponents of the software, developers like myself that have used it successfully over all these decades, that love to discuss its many capabilities and continue to find new innovative ways to provide an exceptional user experience.

Thankfully, Microsoft continues to provide updates, ensuring compatibility with modern operating systems and evolving business needs. While Microsoft is sure to promote their other database products, it’s hard to imagine them ever turning off the lights on Access. In fact, I can only hope they’ll increase the functionality of Access to include graphical user interface improvements like natively displaying animated gifs and performing transitions (form and/or element fades/wipes/zooms/etc.) similar to what is found in Microsoft PowerPoint.

Conclusion

Despite the ever-changing landscape of database technology and competitive software, Microsoft Access remains a relevant and powerful tool. Its affordability, ease of use, and adaptability make it essential software for many businesses and organizations worldwide. While enterprise databases and cloud-based solutions continue to evolve, Microsoft Access holds its ground as a versatile, efficient, and reliable database management system.

In all my research to date, no other application out there does all that Access does as a whole. Sure, maybe a different relational database application can handle “big data” data-science analysis better, but that may be all it does with no user-friendly interface nor will that competitive application be able to handle the multi-application integration that Access has with Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.. When it comes to automation and productivity, with the metric being that things get done correctly and quickly for the everyday worker, that’s still going to be why Access sits at the top.

In subsequent blog posts, I’ll be sharing stories of Access databases I’ve created and how the ability to rapidly develop them brought forth immediate benefits to me and my clients. I will also describe how it can serve as a prototype / stepping-stone / proof-of-concept for a larger enterprise database system.

Are you still using Microsoft Access in your business? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments! Need an Access database? Click here to hire me!

Glossary of Key Terms

RDBMS (Relational Database Management System): A database management system based on the relational model, which organizes data into tables with rows and columns.
DBMS (Database Management System): Software for creating and managing databases.
.mdb: The file extension for older versions of Microsoft Access databases.
.accdb: The file extension for newer versions of Microsoft Access databases, offering improved performance, security, and capacity.
GUI (Graphical User Interface): A user interface that allows users to interact with software through visual elements like icons and windows.
SQL (Structured Query Language): A standard language for accessing and manipulating databases.
VBA (Visual Basic for Applications): A programming language used within Microsoft Office applications (including Access) to automate tasks and create custom functions.
Data Connector: A feature that allows Microsoft Access to connect to external data sources.
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): A European Union regulation on data protection and privacy.
Cloud Connectivity: The ability of a software application to connect to and utilize cloud-based services and data storage.
Concurrent Users: The number of users accessing a database simultaneously.
Scalability: The ability of a database system to handle increasing amounts of data and users without a significant decrease in performance.
Data Integrity: The accuracy and consistency of data stored in a database.
ETL (Extract, Transform, Load): The process of extracting data from various sources, transforming it into a consistent format, and loading it into a database or data warehouse.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning): A type of software system that helps organizations manage and automate many of their business processes.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management): A system for managing a company’s interactions with current and potential customers.
COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf): Software applications you could buy today, be it web-based or a desktop/mobile application.