I built my own Access database. What would I lose?

A question somebody actually typed at us, answered from the code · 21 September 2026

Somebody running a small club asked us this about their own database — about four thousand records across six tables, forms for data entry, and a few reports they print for meetings. “Can I move it into this, and what would I lose?” Here is the honest list, losses first.

What you lose

• VBA and macros. Nothing behind a button comes across, and that is not an oversight we intend to fix: there is no scripting language here at all. Automations are a fixed set of things that can happen, written as a sentence. Anything outside that set is refused rather than run. If the value of your database lives in code, this is the wrong product and you should stop reading here.
• Calculated fields. There is no formula language. A value worked out from other records — subscriptions owed, last attendance — is done as an automation instead, which updates the field when the thing it depends on changes.
• Reports. This is the big one for a club, and it is a flat no: there is no report designer. No banded layout, no grouped subtotals, no page headers, no print preview to lay out.
  
  What you CAN do, as of 21 September 2026: press Print on any list and get a PDF of exactly what is on screen — your columns, filtered and sorted the way you left it — and save any single record as a PDF. For a membership list, an attendance sheet or a stock count to carry round, that is the job done. For a report with sections and running totals, it is not, and we would rather you knew which one you need.
• Form layout. Forms are generated from your fields. You do not lay them out, set tab order, or build subforms. Most people find that a relief; if you have spent years getting a form exactly right, you will not get it back.
• Queries as objects. There is no saved-query designer. Views filter, group and sort one collection, and a record page shows the records that link to it — which covers most of what small databases use queries for, and not the clever ones.

What comes across

The data, and the links between your tables. Export each table to CSV and bring them in one at a time, starting with the table the others point at — members before subscriptions, cars before events — because a link is recovered to a collection that already exists. Four thousand records across six tables is a small job, not a project.

You do not prepare anything first. The import creates the collection and names the fields from your own column headers; there is no mapping step to work through. It guesses each column's type and tells you why, and asks exactly one question — when a date column reads two ways, because guessing would write wrong dates silently.

Forms you get for free, generated from the fields. Screens too.

What you gain, since the list above is one-sided

• Several people in it at once, with no shared file to corrupt.
• It runs on a Mac.
• No 2 GB ceiling.
• An encrypted copy on your own machine that works with no connection and syncs when it can — plus a browser version for anyone who would rather not install anything.
• Every version of every record kept, with who changed it, and one-click restore.
• Rules about who can see and edit which records.

So: should you move?

If your database is a place to keep records that several people need, and the code in it is a few buttons you could live without — yes, and the move is an afternoon.

If what you print is a LIST — the members, who turned up, what is on the shelf — that works now, and this paragraph used to say it did not. It was written on 21 September and the Print button shipped the same day, which is the honest reason it changed.

If what you print is a REPORT — sections, subtotals, a layout you spent an evening getting right — wait. We know it is missing, it is written down, and we would rather you came back in three months than moved now and found out in front of your committee.

Being straight about where we are: Bionic Forms is pre-launch. There is no iOS or Android app; the macOS, Windows and Linux desktop builds and the web app are what exist today, the Windows build is not code-signed yet so Windows warns the first time you run it, and we have no external customers to point at. Every claim on this page was read out of our own source code before it was written, including the five losses at the top.