A lot of people have asked me why there are six Advanced Access lessons covering macros between the Expert classes and the Developer classes.

I've never been a huge fan of macros. I think they're difficult to work with. I grew up a programmer. I learned BASIC on my TRS-80 back when I was 8 years old. So programming has always come naturally to me. I think in lines of code. Macros, to me, just make things difficult. You have to search through lists of commands and rearrange them in blocks - just counter-intuitive to me.

But, I also understand that some people don't want to learn programming. They have no ambition to be programmers. Macros allow them to add some simple automation to their database. And that's fine. That's reason #1 why I decided to do a few macro classes.

Reason #2 is because at the time, Microsoft had a web-based feature of Access available called Web Apps. These allowed you to take your database and put it on the web. Web Apps, however, didn't support VBA. They only allowed macros. So this is another reason why I wanted to put together some advanced classes for people learn to macros for Web Apps.

Around the time that I was finishing Advanced Level 6, Microsoft discontinued Web Apps, so I decided to stop the macro lessons and move straight into VBA programming. (Side note - a lot of Access haters took this announcement to shout to the world that Access itself was being discontinued, which was so far from the truth that the light from planet truth will take decades to reach us. Haters gonna hate.)

Even though there is a little bit of overlap I think it's still handy for people to learn some macros because you may encounter other databases that have macros in them. Also most of the Wizards create macros, so it's good to know the basics. I also do cover a lot of good material in those classes such as how events are handled.

I don't consider the advanced lessons as time wasted. There's a lot of good material in there. But yes, honestly, when I do re-record the series I will probably leave macros out and perhaps do a separate seminar on the side for just macros for people who don't want to learn programming.