However they did manage to add RPA to PowerApps, which is a plus.
However they did manage to add RPA to PowerApps, which is a plus.
Access... I agree and miss it, but I can see why they wanted to replace it. You couldn't build scalable applications with it because of database locking, and to do the sort of stuff you can do in PowerApps you had to resort to VBA which was beyond the capability of most users (and a language they were trying to escape from anyway!). Lots of the things being built in Access could also be built in Sharepoint Lists, which was also simpler for many users and 'cloud/mobile native'. The more complicated things being built in access... I believe Microsoft probably looked at a lot of them and thought that they would be better in SQL Server & C# / Visual Studio. Plus from a commercial perspective it's way easier to sell PowerApps, you just show managers that you can put things on their phone.
Also most VBA code already written is inherently locked into the windows API and COM framework so isn’t multi-platform by design. Code written in VBA on Excel for Windows often doesn’t port across to Mac without errors because there is little abstraction from the host OS. That’s why the replacement technology is a cross-platform JavaScript API for Excel (that will eventually allow fully cross platform macros).
It does have WinUI integration via winforms, but again porting winforms to mobile and web would be a huge technical challenge and be very ugly (or break compatibility).