Week in Review: October 26, 2024

Just Published

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

Articles

• Luke Chung (FMS Blog)

  • Microsoft Office 2024 Released

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • SQL Server Express – Limitations?
  • Calculating the height of a sub-report
  • MS Office Dev Team is not perfect and neither are we!
  • What’s Your Work Flow?

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • Using ExifTool in VBA to Work With File Exif Meta Information
  • Microsoft Excel Won’t Close If Opened Through Windows Explorer
  • Reverting Back From the ‘New Outlook’
  • The ‘New Outlook’ A Total Disaster

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • Folder Image Viewer (UPDATED)
  • AEU36: Using VBE_Extras add-in with Access
  • Access Specifications Issues (UPDATED)
  • Sort Bit Fields in Linked SQL Server Tables
    • Editor's Note: Check out my related article on this topic:
      • Yes/No Fields in SQL Server: The SQL Server equivalent of an Access Yes/No field is the "bit" data type. Or is it?
  • NEW - Monaco SQL Editor (UPDATED)
  • Unsplit Database Tables
  • Monaco SQL Editor Temporarily Disabled

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • Throwback Thursday: October 24, 2024

Videos‌

• Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)

  • Modern Chart Improvements in Access (52:52): with Maria Barnes

• Sean MacKenzie (YouTube channel)

  • Combination Query (21:19): How to Make a Combination Query in Microsoft Access

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • Excel Import Cleanup, Part 1 (21:50): Import Excel Data into Microsoft Access and Remove Unwanted Header & Footer Rows Automatically
  • Excel Import Cleanup, Part 2 (17:15): Import Excel Data into Microsoft Access and Remove Unwanted Header & Footer Rows, Part 2
  • Nested IIF (17:59): Using Nested IIF Functions to Categorize Customer Spending in Microsoft Access
  • Sluggish Form? Part 1 (20:53): Sluggish Form? Optimizing Form Performance for Faster Loading in Microsoft Access
  • Sluggish Form? Part 2 (21:13): Sluggish Form? Optimizing Form Performance for Faster Loading in Microsoft Access, Part 2

• Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)

  • Windows Explorer's Preview Pane Blocking Excel From Shutting Down (03:20)

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.}

• October 29, 2024: Maria Barnes - Integrate Monaco framework to improve SQL editor capabilities
• November 06, 2024: Chris Arnold - An Image / Photo Cataloguer for Access
• November 07, 2024: Greg Regan - Modern Access Interfaces
• November 20 (9:30 am - 4:00 pm): In-person UK AUG Autumn 2024 Conference, Oxford University (Steve Girling, Anders Ebro, Mike Wolfe, Peter Bryant)
• November 26, 2024: George Young- Using Web APIs in Access
• December 04, 2024: Adrian Bell - Custom Ribbons Using Command Bars
• December 05, 2024: Crystal Long and Geoff Griffith- Creating Add-ins that run in Access and Office
• January 8, 2025: Philipp Stiefel - topic to be confirmed
• February 05, 2025: John Mallinson - Using VBE_Extras Add-In with Access
• March 05, 2025; Alexander Denz - Topic title to be confirmed (JUST ADDED)
• April 02, 2025: John Heaser - Source Control for Access & SQL Databases (JUST RESCHEDULED)
• May 15, 2025 @ 9:30 am - 5:00 pm: In-person UKAUG 30th Anniversary Conference 2025, Imperial College London (Armen Stein, other speakers TBA)

Access Roadmap

No changes were made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2024-10-19) and this week (2024-10-26).

The roadmap was last updated on October 4, 2024. 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

• SEP 2024: Integrate Monaco framework to improve SQL editor capabilities

Rolling Out

None.

Launched

• AUG 2024: Modern Chart Improvements
• NOV 2023: Making 32-bit Access Large Address Aware (LAA)