Week in Review

Week in Review: May 17, 2025

Highlights include a short video series on implementing a record "Recycle Bin", creating custom nav icons with the free Metro Studio, and a reasoned plea for an Access AI Copilot.

Mike Wolfe

May 17, 2025 • 6 min read

Just Published

^{This section includes videos, articles, and (occasionally) open-source project updates from the past 7 days.}

Articles

^{*Article descriptions generated by Claude-3.7-Sonnet.}

Access Forever
- How to Deal with Update Bugs, by Karl Donaubauer: A comprehensive guide to identifying, diagnosing, and managing Access update bugs through proper channel selection, systematic testing, and effective workarounds.
Marcus Dieterle (LinkedIn Articles)
- Developers SQL Helpers - Your little SQL toolbox for MS Access!: A practical toolbox of VBA functions for MS Access developers, including checkSQL, debugSQL, and cSQL for easier SQL debugging and value formatting.
Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
- Microsoft Access customer form logging strategy: A custom approach to tracking important form changes by comparing original and final recordset states to generate human-readable change logs.
- The HCI Way™ -- A Dive into Agile Project Management and Sales!: An overview of HCI's business strategy combining agile project management with value-based pricing and weekly deliverables to enhance customer satisfaction.
- Why I think hourly billing is nuts: A critique of hourly billing for Access developers, highlighting how it commoditizes work, creates earning ceilings, and disincentivizes efficiency.
- A day in the life: A personal reflection on balancing client work with business administration as a solo Access developer, questioning the trade-offs between independence and employment stability.
- Working in small chunks -- deliver faster: Advice on breaking projects into smaller, quickly deliverable chunks to build client trust, gather feedback, and ensure alignment with customer needs.
Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
- MS Access: The Last Office Holdout Without Copilot & Why That Should Change: An examination of why Microsoft Access remains the only major Office application without Copilot integration and the compelling business case for adding AI capabilities to this database tool.
- VBA Function to Determine if a File is a Valid JSON File: A practical guide presenting multiple VBA approaches to validate JSON files, including using ScriptControl, file extension validation, Modern Web Browser Control, and JSON libraries.
Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
- AEU41: Non-Normal User Interfaces with Normal Data: Information about an upcoming Access Europe presentation on creating non-traditional user interfaces while maintaining normalized data structures.
- AEU42: Large Monitor Support and Responsive Forms: Information about an upcoming Access Europe presentation covering two new features: a zoom slider for form magnification and support for larger form widths on modern monitors.
- Command Line Project Signing (UPDATED): A guide to using the new command line switch for signing VBA projects in Access including various syntax options and using certificate thumbprints.
- Access Command Line Switches (UPDATED): A comprehensive reference for all Access command line switches including examples of usage and information about deprecated options.
- Videos/Presentations on YouTube (UPDATED): An extensive collection of Access-related videos organized by channel, including Isladogs on Access, Mendip Data Systems, Access User Groups, Access DevCon, and Access Europe presentations.
- AEU39: Update, update . . . the company is in a state! (UPDATED): A recap of Karl Donaubauer's Access Europe presentation about managing Office and Windows updates to prevent or mitigate update-related bugs in Access applications.
Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Throwback Thursday: May 15, 2025: A curated collection of previously published debugging resources, including articles on tracking down error codes, using ProcMon, and debugging automation errors and private procedures.
- Power Automate with VBA with Ynte Jan Kuindersma: A summary of Ynte Jan Kuindersma's Access DevCon Vienna presentation on using Microsoft Power Automate as an alternative to Outlook automation and for connecting Access applications to modern cloud services.

Videos‌

Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)
- Icons for Access using Metro (35:08): with Greg Regan
- Update, update . . . the company is in a state! (01:04:54): with Karl Donaubauer
Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- Quick Queries #40 (19:49): Compacting Back-End, Recycle Bin, UNION 2 GB Limit, More!
- Recycle Bin, Part 1 (15:25): How to Send Records to a Recycle Bin Instead of Deleting Them in Microsoft Access
- Recycle Bin, Part 2 (10:39): How to Send Records to a Recycle Bin Instead of Deleting Them in Microsoft Access, Part 2
- Recycle Bin, Part 3 (14:04): How to Send Records to a Recycle Bin Instead of Deleting Them in Microsoft Access, Part 3
- Control Name in Nested Subform (11:51): How to Reference a Control in a Nested Subform in Microsoft Access
Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)
- VBA WIA Class Module Teaser (08:50)
Edcelle John Gulfan (YouTube channel)
- How to Create Dashboard Analytics in Microsoft Access (12:15)

New to Me

^{This section includes content I discovered this week that has been around for awhile.}

Nothing new this week.

Upcoming Access User Group Events

^{NOTE: Only English-language user group meetings with scheduled guest speakers or topics are listed. For a complete list of upcoming events, visit the}^{Access User Group event calendar}^{. Not all links below include the start time and time zone. For that information, check out this handy reference guide from Access MVP Maria Barnes over at AccessForever.org:}^{Access User Groups 2025}^.

[May 27, 2025] Adrian Bell: Using Domain AD Security Features from within Access (JUST ADDED)
[June 04, 2025] Domenico Ruggiero: Orchestrating Office: Amplifying Access with Multi-Application Automation
[June 05, 2025] John Colby: Preparing your Access Database Application for Deployment — Tools and Tips (JUST ADDED)
[July 02, 2025] Pete Poppe: Faking ‘Non-Normal’ User Interfaces with Normal Data (NEW DATE)
[August 06, 2025] Colin Riddington: Large Monitor Support and Responsive Forms (NEW DATE)
[September 03, 2025] Adam Waller: Topic TBD
[October 01, 2025] Marcus Dieterle: High impact – Custom dialogs and mini-notifications
[November 05, 2025] Aleksander Wojtasz: Topic TBD

Access Roadmap

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2025-05-10) and this week (2025-05-17).

The roadmap was last updated on April 10, 2025. The development priorities were last updated at the German-language AEK conference on October 20, 2024.

Listed below is a snapshot of the official Access Roadmap.

"In Development", "Rolling Out", and "Launched" are Microsoft terms that I pulled straight from the public roadmap.

"Development Priorities" do not appear on the Access Roadmap. Instead, they get updated from time to time in official Access blog posts or Access engineering team presentations. I'll include a link to the source of the current development priorities as they get updated.

Development Priorities

The items listed below reflect Microsoft's order of priority and were published in the following article, Microsoft's Plans for Access Oct '24 – March '25.

The items are listed in priority order according to Principal Engineering Manager Dale Rector. The "Expected Benefit" of each feature is shown in italics after the description of the feature itself.

New priorities added since the previous set of priorities are shown in bold below.

Continued Focus on Monthly Issue Fixes: (Monthly Issue Fix Blog) Improved product quality and reliability
Large monitor support for forms: Improved support of Access on the latest hardware
Integrated source control: Simplifying the process of building mission critical Access solutions

Special thanks to Karl Donaubauer for posting the updated priorities at AccessForever.org.

In Development

JUN 2025: Add zoom slider magnification to Microsoft Access: Access will add magnification slider (10% to 500%) in lower right of the application, similar to the feature in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It will also be keyboard accessible and available on the ribbon.
JUL 2025: Modernize Access Forms and Reports to work well on Large Format Monitors: Remove the 22-inch size limit and modernize Access forms and reports work well on large format monitors and provide responsive behavior for different form factors.

Rolling Out

None listed.

Launched

NOTE: Dates listed are rollout start dates.

AUG 2024: Modern Chart Improvements: A top ask from customers is to modernize Access charts and to support better data visualization in Access. To satisfy this user request, we are integrating a new charting package called “Ivy” into Access. Ivy is a charting package written by the Office DVX team that is currently used in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
SEP 2024: Integrate Monaco framework to improve SQL editor capabilities: The Monaco Editor is the fully featured code editor from VS Code with standard IDE functionality such as syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, and autocomplete.

Upcoming End-of-Life Dates

Here are the key end-of-life dates Access developers should track:

2029

[JAN 09] Windows Server 2019
[OCT 09] Access 2024 | Outlook 2024
[OCT 09 (or later)] Classic Outlook
- See "Edit 8/12/2024" at top of this article for official clarification that "both perpetual and subscription [i.e., MS 365] versions of Outlook will be supported until 2029"
- Support for Classic Outlook is guaranteed at least through 9 Oct 2029; it may be extended beyond this date

2030

[JAN 08] SQL Server 2019

2031

[OCT 14] Windows Server 2022

2033

[JAN 11] SQL Server 2022

2034

[OCT 10] Windows Server 2025

Ongoing

Microsoft 365 (with subscription)

Date TBD

Complete removal of VBScript from Windows OS (Microsoft Announces the Death of VBScript)