Missing Macro Actions

This tip 'Missing Macro Actions' is applicable to Microsoft Access 2007 or later

Are you using Microsoft Access 2007 or later, and you have decided to add a Macro, but there seems to be some missing macro actions, including the one you are looking for in the ‘Action’ drop down list and you were positive it was there in previous versions of Microsoft Access.

If this is what you thinking, then you would be correct.

Microsoft Access has hidden all macros actions, they consider to be unsafe.

The definition for unsafe actions from Microsoft is:

Unsafe actions are any actions that could allow a user to modify the database or gain access to resources outside the database. However, actions that Access disables can sometimes be considered safe. For example, if you trust the person who created the database, you can trust any unsafe macro actions in the database.

They include the following Macro Actions:

  • CopyDatabaseFile
  • CopyObject
  • DeleteObject
  • Echo
  • OpenDataAccessPage
  • OpenDiagram
  • OpenFunction
  • OpenModule
  • OpenStoredProcedure
  • OpenView
  • PrintOut
  • Rename
  • RunSavedImportExport
  • RunSQL
  • Save
  • SendKeys
  • SetValue
  • SetWarnings
  • ShowToolbar
  • TransferDatabase
  • TransferSharePointList
  • TransferSpreadsheet
  • TransferSQLDatabase
  • TransferText
  • RunApp

There are also be some RunCommand actions are blocked and some safe actions may also be blocked if you add an action argument against them. Basically if the action is missing and was there in previous versions, the chances are it has been hidden.

All is not lost, these can be reactivated, by selecting the ‘Show all Actions’ button as indicated below.

This will then show all the actions – trusted or not.

Note: If you use untrusted Macros or VBA code in your database, you will have to add the location of your database to Trusted Location otherwise the Macros will be disabled.

One other query you may have is that the ‘Show All Actions’ button is greyed out. The most likely reason for this is a database is an earlier version of Microsoft Access 2007, trying changing it to Microsoft Access 2007, if for some reason that is not possible, you may need to write some VBA code to get around this problem.

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