Week in Review: March 16, 2024

Just Published

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

Articles

• Philipp Stiefel (CodeKabinett)

  • Warnings and Trust – Trust Center Settings in Microsoft Office

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • Access Programming – What I do and Why (SQL query debugging)
  • TDD – 063 – Thinking through the auditor and form field vs table column data changing
  • TDD – 062 – Auditing form controls bound to the same fields
  • TDD – 061 – Radio button, Checkboxes, and Toggle Buttons, Oh my!
  • TDD – 060 – Using triple state checkboxes in Access
  • TDD – 059 – Add a triple state checkbox test
  • TDD – 058 – Add a checkbox test
  • TDD – 057 – Tests refactored and ready to continue building more tests!
  • TDD – 056 – Added functions to increase test readability
  • TDD – 055 – All count tests refactored, but final test still rather unreadable
  • TDD – 054 – Refactoring 2 more counting tests and starting on a third
  • TDD – 053 – Refactoring the previous tests to use the new functions

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • Microsoft Access is Actively Being Developed!
  • Microsoft Access Export Formatting Bug
  • Microsoft, You’re Killing Me Here!
  • How to Create a New Blank Database Via VBA
  • A Review of the ‘Access’ Feedback Portal
  • Compact and Repair – File Already In Use Bug
  • Microsoft Access Close Button Bug
  • Modern Web Browser Iteration Bug

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • Access Wizards, User Data & Cache
  • Freeze Columns in Continuous Forms - Part 3 (updated)
  • Move/Resize Borderless Form Using Mouse - Part 2
  • FIXED: Error 3283 when refreshing links (updated)
  • Hide & Restore Selected Columns - Part 2 (updated)
  • Export Customised Ribbon
  • Paint Me Transparent in a Continuous Form (updated)
  • Move Borderless Form Using Mouse Event - Part 1

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • Access Day 2024: The Access Developer's Guide to Version Control
  • Access Version Control: A Quick Start Guide
  • Microsoft MVP Summit 2024
  • The One Policy That Proves Microsoft is All In on AI
  • twinBASIC at Access DevCon Vienna 2024

Videos‌

• Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)

  • Access Tab Control, Unicode, Format (Excel too) (53:09): with Crystal Long
  • Sharing Data Outside Your Local Network (47:19): with Linda Ewen

• Colin Riddington [Isladogs] (YouTube channel)

  • Freeze Columns in Continuous Forms (16:23)
  • Hide & Restore Selected Columns in a Continuous Form (09:29)
  • Paint Me Transparent (13:11): Selectively Hide Controls in a Continuous Form
  • Move Borderless Form Using Mouse Down Event (04:07)

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • Hide Access: Part 1 (16:58): Hide Access: Customizing Your Database to Conceal the Microsoft Access Interface
  • Hide Access: Part 2 (25:56): Hide Access: Customizing Your Database to Conceal the Microsoft Access Interface, Part 2
  • Disable Printing: Part 1 (18:29): How to Disable Printing in Microsoft Access, Part 1: Disabling CTRL-P Keystroke
  • Disable Printing: Part 2 (12:42): How to Disable Printing in Microsoft Access, Part 2: Disabling Right-Click Shortcut Menus
  • Disable Printing: Part 3 (17:39): How to Disable Printing in Microsoft Access, Part 3: Disabling Print Preview Ribbon Tab

• Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)

  • Creating a New Microsoft Access Database via VBA (20:40)
  • Reporting Bugs and Providing Feedback & Suggestions to Microsoft (18:45)

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.}

• March 26, 2024: Steve Schapel - Unraveling Constraints – A Case Study
• April 3, 2024: Dale Fye - Working with Command Bars and the Access Shortcut Tool
• April 04, 2024: Tom van Stiphout- Developing Solid Applications
• April 9, 2024: UK Access User Group - April 2024 Conference - in-person Access conference at Imperial College, London
• April 18-19, 2024: Access DevCon Vienna - (Online in Microsoft Teams) Agenda available here
• May 1, 2024: Colin Riddington - View & Edit Import/Export (IMEX) Data Task Specifications
• June 05, 2024: Adolph Dupré - Creating Classes from tables
• July 03, 2024: Olaf Nöhring - Getting Attention with style: An Improved, Enhanced Message Box
• September 04, 2024: Aleksander Wojtasz - Follow-up session on Interactive Gantt charts
• October 02, 2024: Alessandro Grimaldi - Animation with Style in Access
• November 06, 2024: Chris Arnold - Tips and Tricks for Continuous Forms

Access Roadmap

There were NO CHANGES to the roadmap between the last Week in Review (2024-03-09) and this one (2024-03-16).

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

UPDATED [2024-03-17]: Fixed broken link to TDD-63 Access JumpStart article.