Week in Review: April 13, 2024

Just Published

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

Articles

• Access Forever

  • InStr function in the WHERE clause of a query crashes Access, by Maria Barnes

• Alessandro Grimaldi

  • New VBA pill!: Gregorian-Ethiopic Calendar

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • Using A Form, Classes, and an Event to Pass Status Messages
  • TDD – 070 – Changing the class to load a user specified form
  • Access Error 2455 Referencing Subform Form Control
  • Access Subform, or Subreport?
  • Running Access Headless
  • ChatGPT woes
  • Access Query Optimization – using Passthrough and local queries together
  • TDD – 069 – Thinking about another class of tests for initializing
  • TDD – 068 – Being a rebel, outside of the Red/Green/Refactor cycle
  • TDD – 067 – Finishing up the refactored control checking
  • TDD – 066 – Extracting a case statement, then do what?
  • TDD – 065 – Deleting a test and refactor review

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • Using VBA To Lock The PC
  • Modern Web Browser Control Disappearing Control Source Bug
  • Microsoft Access Roadmap Updated, Well Sort Of!
  • How to Expand All the Microsoft Roadmap Items

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • Change Query Views Using Command Bars Code (updated)
  • Datasheet Row/Column Select & Spell Check
  • AEU26: Command Bars & the Access Shortcut Tool (updated)

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • How VBA IDE Addins Get Loaded From the Windows Registry
  • The Windows Registry: A Deep Dive for VBA Developers
  • Version Control with twinBASIC in 2024
  • Quick Tip: Connect Multiple Outlook Accounts to Zapier
  • Positioning: What You Need to Know to Run an Access Business

Videos‌

• Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)

  • SQL Server Audit Tables (01:05:56): with Kent Gorrell
  • Working with CommandBars, the Access Shortcut Tool and a simple Audit Log (53:44): with Dale Fye

• Denver Area Access Users Group (YouTube channel)

  • Access Version Control: the msaccess-vcs-addin (49:23): with Adam Waller

• Colin Riddington [Isladogs] (YouTube channel)

  • Highlight Sorted & Filtered Columns in Continuous Forms (06:59)

• Alessandro Grimaldi (YouTube channel)

  • VBA Pill #38: Gregorian-Ethiopian calendar (01:09)

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • Quick Queries #16 (19:28): Shortest Path, Database on CD, M2M Details, More...
  • Vertical Lines (15:09): How to Insert Vertical Lines in Report Columns in Microsoft Access
  • Driving Directions (17:30): How to Use Google Maps with Microsoft Access to Get Driving Directions to Multiple Locations
  • Hide Pricing (19:10): How to Show or Hide Line Item Pricing on Invoices in Microsoft Access
  • SQL Syntax (14:42): Differences in SQL Syntax Between Microsoft Access and SQL Server

• Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)

  • Roadmap Review (21:44)
  • Disappearing Control Source (07:07): Microsoft Access - Modern Web Browser control - Disappearing Control Source

• Edcelle John Gulfan (YouTube channel)

  • DEMO: LOAN DATABASE created using Ms Access (14:58)
  • DEMO: Asset Tracking Management System (23:11)
  • How to Insert THUMBS UP and THUMBS DOWN in Ms Access (04:25)

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.}

• April 16, 2024: Juan Soto - Managing SQL Server Migration Projects
• April 18-19, 2024: Access DevCon Vienna - (Online in Microsoft Teams) Agenda available here
• April 30, 2024: Jim Dettman and Doug Yudovich - Learn how to chat with other Access developers on Discord
• May 1, 2024: Adolph Dupré - Using  VBA to create a class based on a table
• May 2, 2024: Tom van Stiphout and Kim Young- Developing Solid Applications
• May 28, 2024: George Young- Using Web APIs in Access
• June 05, 2024: Colin Riddington - View & Edit Import/Export (IMEX) Data Task Specifications
• July 03, 2024: Olaf Nöhring - Getting Attention with style: An Improved, Enhanced Message Box
• August 7, 2024: Peter Poppe - Working with Treeviews  (JUST ADDED)
• 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
• December 04, 2024: Adrian Bell - topic to be confirmed  (JUST ADDED)
• January 1, 2025: Philipp Stiefel - topic to be confirmed  (JUST ADDED)

Access Roadmap

The following change was made to the roadmap between the last Week in Review (2024-04-06) and this one (2024-04-13):

• "Making 32-bit Access Large Address Aware (LAA)" moved from "In Development" to "Launched."  

Note that this was purely a change to the roadmap itself.  The feature actually launched back in November 2023, but the roadmap did not get updated at the time.

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

None.

Rolling Out

None.

Launched

• APR 2023: Modern Web Browser Control
• MAR 2023: New Modern Web Browser Form Control
• NOV 2023: Making 32-bit Access Large Address Aware (LAA)