Now we haven’t lost track of the fact that this newsletter is really about Excel, its ancillary products (e.g. the Power tools) and Windows impacts thereon. Having said that, we know many of you also use Excel’s sister product, Microsoft Access, and we thought we had better advise you of a recent key update.

Seen as a mistake when removed, Microsoft announced in early September that dBASE file support (.dbf) has been reintroduced in Access, albeit only for Office 365 customers at this time. This means you can once again import or link to data stored in dBASE databases in Access. This is a key file format whose omission for so long was not understood by many end users.

Currently, support for dBASE in Access 2016 is available to Office 365 subscribers. This feature will first roll out to Office Insider participants and later to consumer and commercial Office 365 subscribers. If you have an Office 365 subscription and dBASE is important to you, make sure you have the latest version of Office.

Did you know that SumProduct offers assistance / consulting for working with MS Access? You can find out more by dropping us a line at contact@sumproduct.com.