[bluGill]

I wish there was a better way to make spreadsheets use a database as a backend. Most of what people do with a spreadsheet would be better done in a database - but a database needs a lot more training to use (if you don't have the training you will make something worse than spreadsheet with your database!)

[Cthulhu_]

Wasn't Microsoft Access basically that? There's also Google's AppSheet, which may be that too.

[jasode]

>Wasn't Microsoft Access basically that?

No because the datagrid in MS Access is too rigid and doesn't have the extensive slice-&-dice features of MS Excel. My first consulting gig was creating customized MS Access applications. Despite that experience, I use MS Excel today because I know that MS Access is too limiting.

[fsckboy]

>>Wasn't Microsoft Access basically that?

>No because the datagrid in MS Access is too rigid and doesn't have the extensive slice-&-dice features of MS Excel.

i'm not saying it worked or worked well, but i'm pretty sure the point of Access in the office suite was so that you could access Access (get the clever marketing?) data from within Excel and then do all the excel things you were used to.

anyone know if that worked or didn't? DDE and all those other projects were always pursuing this as a dream

[mjrpes]

Access's database is fairly limited and prone to corruption, especially using in a (local) network setup. The better solution would be to have real backend database and use ODBC to sync in data to Excel and Access. Maybe back in 1995 it made more sense but that's before my time.

Access was pretty amazing on its own back in its day, ignoring its multi-user limitations. It glued together a relational database, visual query builder, GUI/Form Builder, and reporting. You could create forms with sub forms that linked tables together. Also had a datasheet view. All of this without touching VBA code, but VBA was there when you needed it.

[osullivj]

dbase II offered similar capabilities on 8 bit CPM workstation in the early 80s.

[zevon]

I think it worked technically and I‘ve seen a few Access-based solutions to problems faced by people/groups without any real access to development resources. However, these solutions pretty much always came from people with rather technical mindsets and I think many of them involved tinkering in the evening and on weekends. So, my assumption would be that the demise of Access was more about UI/UX, complexity, familiarity and the like than it was about functionality.

[jfengel]

It sounds as if Excel has grown to incorporate most database features.

Does it have atomic transactions yet? That's the main thing keeping me using small databases like Access even when a mere spreadsheet would do otherwise.

[breadwinner]

Have you tried Airtable? It works like a spreadsheet but is a database underneath.

[yomismoaqui]

Microsoft Access requires more training (tables, foreign keys...) and from experience most of the people using Excel managed to bend it to do what they wanted.

The maintainability of the resulting systems was not great, but they did the job and worse is better I guess..

[IAmBroom]

Add in to that: programming VBA for Excel spreadsheets is extremely trivial; programming in VBA for Access is second worst only to programming in Visio, MS Office's awful drawing program.

[sroerick]

You know, I used Retool a lot, and it made me think that I'd actually really like a modern Microsoft Access.

Kind of an open source Google Forms/ Access where you could deploy front ends very quickly and have it hit a DB

[breadwinner]

Here's a modern Microsoft Access: https://visualdb.com/

Or try Airtable.

[breadwinner]

> I wish there was a better way to make spreadsheets use a database as a backend.

Here you go: https://visualdb.com/

[password4321]

Years ago I used Excel (VBA) as a CRUD interface on a database with minimal validation, it didn't take too long.

Pretty sure something fairly similar is built-in these days.