Unhelpful ‘help’

by Stuart on 2 August 2011

I need to get this off my chest – Microsoft Access’ least helpful help facility.

I’m building an Access database. It’s nothing fancy, and I haven’t built one for a while, so I’ve created a table that I want to delete. I can’t see easily how to do this, mainly because I’ve had to migrate to Office 2007 which is the LEAST intuitive thing Microsoft have ever produced. So I turn to the Help facility.

After spending a couple of minutes scratching around I finally find the entry I’m looking for, only to be taken to a VIDEO to explain to me how to do this. And to cap it all, before I’m allowed to see the damned video, I have to watch a 48 second commercial for Chevrolet cars! Which I can’t buy ‘cos I don’t live in the USA, and which I wouldn’t buy anyway because by now I’m steaming! Oh, did I mention that I didn’t have the right Flash player installed, so I had to wait while that downloaded and installed too. The whole exercise took over 5 minutes.

All I need to do is right click on the table, and select ‘Delete’.

Would it not have been a whole lot simpler just to tell me that? In text. In 10 seconds.

Please, if anyone out there has anything similar, comment. I’d be interested to know if there are other instances of stupid unhelpful help out there.

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