By Hiran de Silva
For anyone working in enterprise systems during the 1990s, the story will sound familiar. As spreadsheet-based processes started to creak under the weight of growing complexity, a familiar chorus began to ring out:
“We’ve outgrown Excel. We need to move to Access.”
It sounded like a logical upgrade. Microsoft Access, after all, had forms, reports, queries, and a development environment to create standalone applications. And it came bundled with Office Professional. Why not move to something that looked more like a “real system”?
But what happened next was not the success story people had hoped for.
The Great Access Debacle
The term “Access application” quickly became associated with failed projects, abandoned databases, and costly rewrites. Why?
Because most people didn’t want a database. They wanted the Excel experience—just more robust and scalable. But what they got instead was a black-box solution that only the original developer understood. When even the tiniest adjustment was needed, that developer was often unavailable. The next consultant would recommend a rewrite. Over time, “Access solution” became code for “maintenance nightmare.”
Frustrated, users went back to Excel. Flawed, yes—but agile, flexible, and within their control.
What the Industry Missed: Access as the Digital Librarian
What most businesses didn’t realize then—and still don’t—is that Access was never meant to replace Excel. It was meant to extend it.
Microsoft Excel and Access were designed to work together in a client-server relationship. Excel is the client. Access is the server. Together, they form a system where:
- Excel remains the user-facing application.
- Access quietly manages structured data in the background—like a digital librarian.
This is not speculative. This is exactly what Satya Nadella demonstrated as early as 1993 in the Microsoft DevCast: a seamless workflow where Excel front-ends communicated with Access databases. It was core to the vision laid out in Bill Gates’s Business @ the Speed of Thought.
But because Access’s UI builder and form development tools were easier to demo than its back-end capabilities, the wrong part of the product got all the attention—and misused.
The Digital Library vs The Access Application
Let’s be crystal clear:
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Access Application | Standalone app with forms, reports, logic built in Access UI. |
| Access as Digital Librarian | Structured database storing shared data for Excel to read/write via SQL. |
- The Access Application replaces Excel. It locks users out of their workflows and centralizes control in the hands of rare specialists.
- The Digital Librarian empowers Excel. It liberates users from email chains, broken links, and copy-paste chaos—without replacing their tools or habits.
History Repeating: The Power Platform Parallel
Fast forward to today. The chants have changed, but the tune is the same:
“You’ve outgrown Excel. Move to the Power Platform.”
Just like in the ’90s, we’re being promised a seamless transition to something better. And just like in the ’90s, the reality is more complicated.
Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI come with limitations:
- No-code/low-code environments restrict flexibility.
- Cloud-first assumptions often ignore client-server architecture best practices.
- Training materials rarely explain how to leverage a central, shared data store—the modern digital library idea—across tools.
The Power Platform isn’t necessarily wrong. But as with Access in the ’90s, it is often being promoted for the wrong use cases, to the wrong audience, with the wrong architecture.
A Better Way: Excel + The Digital Librarian (Access or Cloud)
What if we don’t abandon Excel?
What if we enable Excel to scale—not by replacing it, but by freeing it from the burden of storing data internally?
That’s exactly what happens when Excel is connected to a shared relational database—whether that’s Access, SQL Server, or Azure SQL. This is the hub-and-spoke architecture that professional Excel developers have used for decades to build scalable, automated, collaborative systems.
- Data lives in a central library.
- Excel connects using ADO or SQL, in the background.
- Business logic lives in lightweight workbooks.
- All users work from the same data, without file sharing or link chaos.
- New cloud clients—like Excel on the web, Google Sheets, Power Apps—can also connect.
This is not theory. This is the architecture behind live budgeting systems, global consolidation, automated reporting, and workflow automation—all built with tools most companies already have.
Why It Works
- Agility: Small changes can be made quickly—by Excel users, not developers.
- Visibility: Everything is transparent, auditable, and testable.
- Scalability: Spreadsheets aren’t bloated with data—they’re lean interfaces.
- Collaboration: No email attachments. No broken links. Everyone’s working live.
Even where SQL Server is preferred for enterprise scale, Access remains a vital ally—as a quick prototyping tool, a local cache, or even the final production backend in smaller departments.
The Mission: Demonstrate, Not Debate
That’s why we created the Excel Mission Impossible series.
Each episode presents a real-world challenge where traditional Excel falls apart. We then compare:
- Cloud planning tools
- Power Platform solutions
- Modern Excel (Power Query, LAMBDA, etc.)
- Native Excel with the digital library approach
And we don’t just compare outputs. We compare:
- Agility
- Understandability
- Implementation time
- Ease of modification
- Business-user empowerment
The results speak for themselves.
Conclusion: It’s Time to Reclaim Access—But the Right Access
Access is not dead. But our understanding of it has been distorted.
The Access Application was a detour—a development rabbit hole that created more problems than it solved.
But Access as a digital librarian—that’s a hidden gem. A scalable, invisible powerhouse that lets Excel shine without the chaos. And it’s still the fastest, most cost-effective way to transform spreadsheets into enterprise systems, especially when paired with Excel’s unmatched flexibility.
It’s time to stop repeating history—and start rewriting it.
Add comment