Week in Review: February 3, 2024

Just Published

^{This section includes videos, articles, and interesting discussions from the past 7 days.}

Articles

• Access Forever

  • Demystifying Microsoft 365 Update Channels, by Peter Doering

• a.p.r. pillai (Learn MS-Access Tips and Tricks)

  • One TextBox and Three Wrapper Class Instances

• Crystal Long (Access Access Newsletter)

  • Get Character with Access and Unicode

• Mathieu Guindon (Rubberduck VBA)

  • RD3: A Year Later

• Jonathan Halder | Steven Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • TDD – 044 – Fixing the test and adding the loop
  • TDD – 043 – Lots of a test failing
  • TDD – 042 – Working toward “the answer”
  • TDD – 041 – My Test Writing Spawns 2 New Simple Objects

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • Microsoft Access WizHook What?
  • Excessive Usage By The Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry Process
  • A New OneDrive Is Upon Us
  • Simulating Keyboard Keystroke Sequences
  • Adding Speech Recognition To Your Application
  • Another Massive Online Data Breach!
  • Quick Tip About Developing Using The Modern Web Browser Control

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • Hide Duplicate Column Values in Continuous Forms
  • View Database Objects & Metadata (updated)
  • Strikethrough Font in Access
  • Run External Apps from Access
  • Set BackColor of all Forms
  • Sort Columns in Continuous Forms
  • AEU25: Better Access Charts - The Next Generation

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • HOW TO: Access the Windows Startup Folder
  • Mercurial: The Road Less Traveled
  • Access 101: DELETE Query
  • Static Linking vs. Dynamic Linking
  • Deep Dive: Improving the Access User Experience with Attached Labels

Videos‌

• Sean MacKenzie (YouTube channel)

  • AutoExec (15:22): How to Use the AutoExec Macro in Microsoft Access

• Alessandro Grimaldi (YouTube channel)

  • Access On Steroids (01:23)

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • Fahrenheit to Celsius (22:30): How to Convert Temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius and Vice Versa in Microsoft Access
  • Force Shutdown: Part 1 (19:01): How to Schedule a Forced Shutdown Time for All Users in your Microsoft Access Database
  • Force Shutdown: Part 2 (19:53): How to Schedule a Forced Shutdown Time for All Users in your Microsoft Access Database, Part 2
  • Force Shutdown: Part 3 (20:12): How to Schedule a Forced Shutdown Time for All Users in your Microsoft Access Database, Part 3
  • Page Numbers (19:11): Everything You Want to Know About Page Numbering in Microsoft Access Reports

• Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)

  • VBA - Check If A File Exists (16:24)
  • VBA - Adding Speech Recognition To Your Application (26:07)
  • Microsoft Access - Modern Web Browser control - Quick Tip (05:19)

Select Open Source Projects: New Releases

• Rubberduck-2: Rubberduck v2.5.9.6319-pre
• Rubberduck-2: Rubberduck v2.5.9.6321-pre

New to Me

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

• Nobody Cares About Your Git History, by Dan Kelch

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.}

• February 7, 2024: Carlos Quintero - Features of MZ-Tools to make you more productive with VBA
• March 6, 2024: Thomas Möller - Better Access Charts in the new Edge Browser Control
• March 7, 2024: Linda Ewen - Sharing Data with Users Outside Your Local Network
• March 15, 2024: Access Day - one-day in-person Access Conference in Seattle, WA area
• April 3, 2024: Dale Fye - Working with Command Bars and the Access Shortcut Tool
• April 18-19, 2024: Access DevCon Vienna - (Online in Microsoft Teams) Agenda to be announced
• May 1, 2024: Colin Riddington - View & Edit Import/Export (IMEX) Data Task Specifications

‌

Access Roadmap

There were NO CHANGES to the roadmap between the last Week in Review (2024-01-27) and this one (2024-02-03).

The development priorities were last updated at the German-language AEK conference on October 14, 2023.

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 in the Next 6 Months.

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.  Dropped priorities are struck through.

1. Continued Focus on Monthly Issue Fixes: (Monthly Issue Fix Blog) Improved product quality and reliability
2. Access becomes Large Address Aware: Removal of key customer error issue
3. Dataverse export improvements: Make it easier and faster for admins to migrate their data to Dataverse
4. Large monitor support for forms: Improved support of Access on the latest hardware
5. Modern Chart Improvements: Expanded support for the most popular chart types and options
6. SQL Editor Improvements: Significantly improved SQL query editing experience
7. Inconsistent Database Error Fix

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

In Development

• NOV 2023: Making 32-bit Access Large Address Aware (LAA)

Rolling Out

None.

Launched

• APR 2023: Modern Web Browser Control
• MAR 2023: New Modern Web Browser Form Control