MZ-Tools/FMS: worth it?

[hecon5]

I have seen several mentions of MZ-Tools here, and as it costs money, and I'm a cheapskate: is it worth it?

Also, FMS seems to have a ton of stuff on their site and a (quite!) expensive development basket. Are they worth it/should they be given consideration?

[Tanarri]

Hi @hecon5 ,

I am using MZ-Tools at the work and I think it is worth the money. There are plenty of things you could do.
Things I am using regulary is:

• ident module / project
• sort moduleprocedures
• add error handler (much variables and possibilities to create the handler like you need it)
• many code-quality options (ok, Rubberduck is here also quite good)
• code explorer
• line numbers (ok, this I do never use :-))
• create bibliothek of code
  You can see here the options to image what is possible: https://www.mztools.com/v8/onlinehelp/MZTools8Help.html

Also we have purchased a copy of FMS Total Access Analyzer. Also a great tool if you want to analyze you project.
It search for a lot of errors with tables and querys and warn if you read a table/field name which doesn' exists.. and a lot more.
But it costs a lot more than MZTools.

Rubberduck is at the moment not able to analyze my access-project with 180.000 lines of code, 1100 query, 300 forms, 80 reports....
But I will always have a look to RD if some day this will be possible

[hecon5]

Thank you! This is enlightening!

[joyfullservice]

I have been using MZ-Tools on a daily basis for quite a few years, and really like it. I am using the last freeware version (v3) before they did the .Net rewrite. (v8) I tested out the beta four years ago, but it was much slower and seemed a bit cluttered at the time. I had one issue in 2016, but the developer resolved it pretty quickly. I plan to continue to using v3 as long as it works, then may switch over to the current version.

The biggest gain I see in MZ-Tools is in improving the quality of the code I write. It makes it super easy to add consistent headers and error handling to procedures (with the tap of a button) and the code review function helps me get rid of unused variables. It works great with no performance issues even on very complex projects.

I use RubberDuck occasionally, but as @Tanarri pointed out, it really bogs down on large projects. They have made a few improvements on the performance side in the past year or two, but at this point it slows down the VBA IDE too much for me to use it on a regular basis.

Another interesting tool that I have found helpful at times is V-Tools. In particular, it can be helpful for reviewing and editing import/export specifications.

[hecon5]

Most excellent!
Thank you!

[A9G-Data-Droid]

The premier error handler is: vbWatchDog
I daily drive RubberDuckVBA for years now.

I've never seen a reason to use MZ-Tools.