One of my favourite features in any version of Access has always been the ability to right-click in any field in any table, regardless of data type, click in the filter for box and type pretty much any expression I wanted.
In Access 2007, the product group has made some major enhancements to the filtering capabilities in Access that are especially useful for novices, but in so doing, they removed the simple filter-for box. This page describes the filtering "enhancements":
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/HA100378391033.aspx
In the old version of access, say I wanted to see all customers where the name included "C*" or "H*". I would right-click in the column of interest, click in the filter-for box and type C* or H* and press enter. Done, instant results. In Access 2007, the same operation cannot be done AT ALL in an single step from any right-click menu. Instead, you’d have to select a Begins with… filter, once for the C*, then do it again for the H*. If you’ve got an entire list this can be horribly tedious (if you’re used to doing it the other way).
The atlernative is to use the ribbon’s Advanced find, which is basically like creating a query. But if I wanted a query, that’s what I would have created. I really miss the right-click filter for box and I know that my personal productivity has suffered due to lack of this feature. Power users have been left behind by removing this easy to use feature, and I hope it will someday make a return.
Darren Myher's Blog 