Week in Review: February 14, 2026

Just Published

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

Articles

^{*Article descriptions generated by Claude-Opus-4.5 and Claude-Sonnet-4.5.}

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
  • Quoting Access projects: Reflections on transitioning to a quoting model for Access development work, including lessons from three active projects with varying degrees of success.
• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
  • My Numbers Aren't Sorting Properly, Now What?: Explains why numeric values stored as text sort incorrectly and provides both workarounds and the proper fix of changing the field data type.
• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
  • Create JSON Files from Access: Explores multiple methods for exporting Access data to JSON format, with a focus on using PowerToys Advanced Paste as an efficient no-code solution.
  • Teams Integration Causing Office Problems: Identifies Microsoft Teams integration as the cause of hanging Office application instances in Task Manager and provides a fix by disabling the Teams chat app registration setting.
• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
  • Throwback Thursday: February 12, 2026: A weekly feature revisiting previously published articles, this edition highlighting role-based SQL Server security and a practical checklist for hardening SQL Server in production environments.

Videos‌

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
  • QQ #79: Freeze Up (37:43): The One Dangerous VBA Command That Can Freeze Up Microsoft Access
  • Escape Key (15:46): How To Cancel A Long Running VBA Loop With The Escape Key In Microsoft Access
  • SQL Server for Access Users - Beginner 1
    • Lesson 4 (22:33): Customer Table, Text Data Types, Primary Key
    • Lesson 5 (21:20): Date, Currency, Number Field Data Types
    • Lesson 6 (15:00): Entering Data in SQL Server Tables
• Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)
  • Creating a Triple State Check Box or Option Group (06:39)
  • Dynamically Loading Subforms (14:06)
  • Color Picker & Converter Utility (04:33)

New to Me

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

• 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.}

• [February 24, 2026] Crystal Long: Recursive Functions
• [March 04, 2026] Chris Arnold: Using Disconnected (In-Memory) ADO Recordsets in Access
• [March 27, 2026] Access Day (in person in Redmond, WA): speakers TBA
• [March 31, 2026] Maria Barnes: Interfacing with the Outlook calendar
• [April 1, 2026] Peter Cole: Using vbWatchdog with Access
• [April 16-17, 2026] Access DevCon Vienna (virtual): speakers TBA
• [May 6, 2026] Tim Finch: Grid Lanes
• [June 3, 2026] Kevin Bell: SQL Server Tips and Tricks for Access Developers
• [September 2, 2026] John Mallinson: Working with the Windows API

Access Roadmap

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2026-02-07) and this week (2026-02-14).

The roadmap was last updated October 15, 2025.

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. Dates listed are "rollout start" dates.

In Development

• OCT 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.
• DEC 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

None listed.

Development Priorities

"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.

The items listed below reflect Microsoft's order of priority and were published in the following Access Forever article, Microsoft's Plans for Access Oct '25 – March '26.

1. Continued focus on monthly issue fixes, security, customer-reported bugs, etc. to improve product quality, security, reliability, and relevance. Most of our engineering hours are spent here.
2. Large monitor support: Remove 22” limitation to support using Access on modern hardware.
3. Large monitor support: Enable zoom slider magnification for forms.
4. Large monitor support: Modernize forms to work well on large monitors.
5. Time allowing, we’ll continue to work on remaining large monitor support features (support zoom in reports and design layout, automatic zooming, support multiple monitor scenarios).
6. If we still have time left over in the semester, we will begin work on Git integration for source code management in Access. (Spec is in progress. We will likely roll this out in phases also beginning the second half of 2026.)

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

Upcoming End-of-Life Dates

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

2024

• [JUL 09] SQL Server 2014

2025

• [OCT 14] Access 2016 | Access 2019 | Office 2016 | Office 2019
• [OCT 14] Windows 10
• [OCT 28] Salesforce ODBC Driver
• [NOV 11] Windows 11 version 23H2

2026

• [APR 01] Auto-migration of Classic Outlook begins for Enterprise users
• [JUL 14] SQL Server 2016
• [OCT 13] Access 2021 | Office 2021
• [OCT 13] Windows 11 version 24H2

2027

• [JAN 12] Windows Server 2016
• [OCT 12] SQL Server 2017

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)