Access DevCon Vienna 2025 - Day One Recap

Access DevCon Vienna began with compelling evidence that Microsoft Access remains a strategic product actively evolving to meet modern development needs.

Day One of Access DevCon Vienna 2025 featured a robust lineup of sessions addressing both current capabilities and future directions for the platform.

• Karl Donaubauer presented community statistics showing Microsoft 365 now dominates developer usage at nearly 70%, while outlining Microsoft's commitment to new features including the Monaco SQL Editor improvements and upcoming large monitor support.
• Colin Riddington demonstrated the dramatically expanded Modern Charts functionality with eleven new chart types.
• Maria Barnes offered a crucial path forward for Outlook integration through Microsoft Graph API as traditional COM automation faces obsolescence.
• John Mallinson unveiled productivity tools to modernize the VBA development experience.
• The Microsoft Access team confirmed an impressive roadmap of enhancements.

Access developers left Day One with renewed confidence in their platform choice and practical solutions for the challenges facing their applications in 2025 and beyond.

Microsoft Access Community Update

Despite Microsoft's limited marketing efforts, Access remains alive and well with committed support through 2029.

Karl Donaubauer presented a data-rich overview of Access in 2025, revealing that Microsoft 365 now dominates developer usage at nearly 70%, though many developers still maintain multiple versions including legacy editions back to Access 2010. He shared exciting developments including the Monaco SQL Editor and Modern Charts improvements, along with Microsoft's roadmap that includes large monitor support and integrated source control coming soon. Perhaps most critically, Karl addressed the challenge of New Outlook's lack of VBA automation capabilities, presenting several workarounds while highlighting dedicated sessions at the conference exploring Graph API and Power Automate as potential solutions.

Professional Access developers can take comfort knowing Microsoft's commitment to the platform extends for at least five more years, with new features actively in development.

Programming Modern Charts in Access

Access MVP Colin Riddington unveiled the full potential of runtime chart programming that has finally arrived in Access.

In his comprehensive presentation, Colin demonstrated how the modern charts feature has evolved from its limited 2019 introduction to become a powerful visualization tool with the significant 2024 update. He showcased all eleven new chart types including Pareto, funnel, and word cloud charts while providing practical code examples for customizing every aspect from colors and data labels to trend lines and grid formatting. Perhaps most valuable was his technique for saving runtime chart customizations to tables, allowing users to personalize their data visualizations without needing design permissions.

Access developers can now create sophisticated, user-configurable charting solutions without resorting to Excel, marking a significant advancement in Access's data visualization capabilities.

Microsoft Graph API: The Future of Outlook Integration

In an expertly-timed presentation, Maria Barnes demonstrated how to bypass the looming Outlook COM extinction with Microsoft Graph API.

The presentation covered the complete process of Microsoft Graph API integration with Access applications, starting with the crucial authentication setup in Microsoft Entra ID through practical implementation of email, calendar, and contact operations. Barnes shared her open-source GitHub solution that handles the complex OAuth authentication flow and provides ready-to-use functions for creating emails, accessing contacts, and managing calendar events. Particularly valuable was her walkthrough of transforming JSON responses into usable Access data structures, allowing developers to maintain Microsoft 365 integration without dependency on the soon-to-be-deprecated COM model.

As Microsoft continues removing VBA and COM support from "New Outlook," this Graph API implementation offers Access developers a crucial migration path to preserve critical email functionality in their applications.

VBE_Extras: Modernizing the VBA Development Experience

John Mallinson's presentation unveiled a powerful solution to the Visual Basic Editor's long-standing limitations.

VBE_Extras is an add-in for the VBA Editor that works across all Office applications, including Access, adding 77 productivity-enhancing commands to streamline development. Mallinson demonstrated key features including intelligent code navigation, smart highlighting that understands context rather than just text, comprehensive refactoring tools, and enhanced IntelliSense capabilities. The tool's ability to track cursor history, provide "Sub to Run" functionality, and offer full-screen editing addresses many pain points Access developers encounter when working with complex projects.

Access developers who implement VBE_Extras can expect to significantly reduce development time while producing more maintainable, robust code structures.

Microsoft Access Team Update

Microsoft Access continues to evolve with an impressive lineup of new features and enhancements.

The Microsoft Access engineering team, led by Dale Rector with engineers Sachin Arunkumar, Courtney Owen, and Shane Groff, demonstrated significant product improvements including command-line database signing capabilities, enhanced Monaco SQL editor with formatting and selected text execution, native form zooming functionality, 14 new modern chart types including exclusive word clouds, and plans to remove the longstanding 22-inch form size limitation. They also addressed upcoming changes to ActiveX control handling across Office and discussed compatibility concerns with the new Outlook client (Monarch), which lacks COM automation support critical for many Access integrations.

These developments clearly demonstrate Microsoft's ongoing commitment to Access development, addressing both longstanding user requests and emerging needs for modern database applications.

Feedback Session Reveals Microsoft's Strategic Adjustments for Access's Future Challenges

The conference concluded with a candid Q&A session where attendees pressed the Microsoft Access team on critical issues facing developers in 2025.

During this revealing exchange, the Access team addressed several major concerns for developers. They acknowledged New Outlook's deprecated COM automation problem, explaining they're working to pressure the Outlook team for alternative interfaces. When questioned about VBScript deprecation, the team appeared to misunderstand that RegEx support is one of the key tools that will be lost, incorrectly suggesting it would survive (likely confusing that feature with the File System Object and Dictionaries, tools that will survive). Other topics included ongoing issues with ActiveX control limitations, Wi-Fi reliability concerns, and the potential for new extensibility models. The team also provided cautiously optimistic timelines for source control integration and Graph API connector features, suggesting they might arrive before year's end.

Though I had to leave before the session concluded, the day's presentations and feedback session clearly demonstrated Microsoft's continued investment in Access while honestly confronting the platform's adaptation challenges in an increasingly API and cloud-driven development landscape.

Acknowledgements

• Initial draft generated by Claude-3.7-Sonnet

UPDATES [2025-04-14]: Remove presenter names from the first two headings for consistency with other headings.