2003 -> 2010 database UI question (navigation pane)

[disquette]

Hi - we recently were upgraded to Win7 / Office 2010. Most of the office components have been reasonably easy to adapt to, but the one we're having more trouble with is Access. Does anyone have recommendations as to how to deal with the following issue?

When we have many queries with similar names, it was really easy in Access 2003's database object pane (for lack of a better term) to see all the comments on the objects at once, so we could see which query was doing what. In Access 2010, you have to right click each object, then hit properties, in order to see the comments. This has been a real hassle for us. See image here for reference in case this helps: http://imgur.com/a/C1Ild .

Is there a toggle somewhere that will let us see the descriptions by default, or is there some other way to deal with this? We have several hundred (thousand?) queries in various databases and we have really relied on seeing those comments to use Access efficiently.



Thanks much for any help!

[burrina]

Why is this even necessary? Are your queries not named well enough to know what they do? Why is it you are looking at the queries directly? Surely, your users are not doing this!
Their is a Documenter for Access if that would help.

[disquette]

Why is this even necessary? Are your queries not named well enough to know what they do? Why is it you are looking at the queries directly? Surely, your users are not doing this!
Their is a Documenter for Access if that would help.

Hello

> Why is this even necessary?

When we have multiple step queries, and we need to do some trouble shooting or figure out where to fork off another path, having those comments visible are helpful to describe what each step of the query chain is doing

> Are your queries not named well enough to know what they do?

It's a matter of perspective I suppose. If I gave a query a 255 character name, i suppose that could work, but that seems a bit cumbersome to work with. As of now, they're pretty good, but the names get relatively long already (like qryDirectorsMeetingRevenue_Orig_1_Tax_Split_Step3 ) and I can see that this is a query for directors' meetings, regarding revenue, including the origination of that money, only for tax-based revenue, and splits the origination credit between multiple originators if applicable.

There's a lot more that the query does than that, however. We really like to document our procedures, even query chains, well, and have enjoyed being able to glance quickly through the list to see what Step2 or Step1 or Step4 does in the query chain very easily. We currently miss that ability in Access 2010.

> Why is it you are looking at the queries directly? Surely, your users are not doing this!

No, end users don't see these queries - we may not be access experts, or even very good at it at all, but we're not sadists. Query building/editing is done by a couple people in operations, and final pretty results are published either through documents or via links to the final queries via intranet front end which html-ifies the returned data.

> Their is a Documenter for Access if that would help.

That's pretty neat, thanks for that. If nothing else it gives me the idea that, if the documentor can do this, I probably can at least make a query that will retrieve all the object types and descriptions for me for the database objects. Not nearly as good as having them visible and clickable/editable, but better than right clicking each one to read our notes.

[burrina]

Thanks for the Clarifications. Hope the Documenter works for you.