Microsoft Access UI Stupidity

I’m all for breaking the rules when it makes sense to do so, but while playing with Access I found their method of handling windows, well, pretty stupid. I can see how it sort of make sense, if you’re going to be using the app a lot it sucks to have to CTRL-TAB through windows instead of ALT-TABbing, so they set it up so that even though MDI child windows of the Access app are, well, child windows of an MDI app, they act as if they are separate windows in the ALT-TAB task list and the task bar.


Except that because they aren’t separate windows you can’t move them on top of another app (to say, read something from notepad while in a single small “MDI child but not really, honest to goodness” window. Or when you have many Access windows open and they group themselves together on the task bar you can’t “close group” like you can any other set of grouped windows (such as a bunch of word “separate windows for real this time” windows).


I should submit this to the UI Hall of Shame.

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Category: Rants

3 Comments on “Microsoft Access UI Stupidity”

  1. My microsoft behavioural bitch of the day:
    In Visual Source Safe, they’ve changed CTRL-A from “Select All Files”, like every other sane program out there, to “Add files to project”.
    I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cursed the person who made that decision.

  2. You can turn this “feature” off by going to Tools->Options on the menu clicking the View tab and deselecting “Windows in Taskbar”.

  3. Thanks Jordan! I searched for how to turn off this awful “feature” and found this page. I never would have thought to look for “Windows in Taskbar”. What an awful name!