Week in Review: November 23, 2024

Just Published

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

Articles

^{*Article descriptions generated by Claude-3.5-Sonnet.}

• Access Forever

  • Access News – AEK26 – Access Team: Updates from the Microsoft Access team at AEK26 conference including Monaco SQL Editor improvements, Large Monitor Support, and ActiveX controls in Office 2024.

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • What to do and focusing on doing it: Reflections on self-discipline and productive work habits as an independent consultant.
  • Tenatively laying out an application structure: Implementation of interface and class modules for a credit card payoff calculator in Access.
  • Implementing an Access architecture for the credit card payoff app: Discussion of form architecture and controller design for a credit card payoff calculator.
  • Test Driven Development and Tables in Access: Explores scenarios where testing the data persistence layer makes sense in Access applications.
  • Considering the various user interface functions of a form: Analysis of form functionality including data binding, validation, and event handling in Access.

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • A Change of Course: Announcement of shifting focus from Microsoft Access feature reviews to instructional content and web development.
  • Hold Off Adopting Thunderbird For Android Devices!: Warning about email blocking issues with Thunderbird for Android and a workaround solution.
  • How To Select A Microsoft Access Combo Box Value Using VBA: Detailed tutorial on programmatically setting combo box values in both simple and normalized table scenarios.

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • AEU35: Developing COM Add-Ins for Access: Announcement of upcoming presentation by Philipp Stiefel on creating COM add-ins for Microsoft Access.
  • NEW - Monaco SQL Editor (UPDATED): Comprehensive guide to Microsoft Access's new Monaco SQL Editor feature, including main features, known issues, and recent fixes.

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • Throwback Thursday: November 21, 2024: A retrospective look at the author's annual twinBASIC presentations at DevCon Vienna from 2021 to 2024.
  • UKAUG 2024: twinBASIC: Past, Present, and Future: Documentation and resources from the author's presentation at the UK Access User Group 2024 Autumn Conference about twinBASIC's evolution and capabilities.
  • Building PhotoDemon with twinBASIC: Step-by-step guide demonstrating how to build PhotoDemon, a complex open-source photo editor, using twinBASIC in about 10 minutes.

Videos‌

• Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)

  • Auto closing Access based on a schedule (52:13): with Steve Owen
  • Monaco SQL Editor for Access (01:03:32): with Maria Barnes
  • Modern Access Interfaces -- Form Resizing Solutions (01:06:30): with Greg Regan

• Karl Donaubauer (YouTube channel)

  • Access News 9 (22:56): November 2024

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • Insert Shapes (15:18): Inserting and Customizing Shapes with Transparent Backgrounds in Microsoft Access
  • Holiday Sale! (02:10): Holiday Sale 2024 - Save 50% on Video Tutorials, Seminars, & Templates - Including Microsoft Access
  • Push a Value (17:41): How to Push, Pull, or Populate a Value Between Forms in Microsoft Access
  • Employee Training, Part 9 (25:51): Tracking Employee Training and/or Certifications in Microsoft Access, Part 9
  • Employee Training, Part 10 (21:32): Tracking Employee Training and/or Certifications in Microsoft Access, Part 10
  • Employee Training, Part 11 (21:50): Tracking Employee Training and/or Certifications in Microsoft Access, Part 11

• Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)

  • Monaco SQL Editor (26:57): Microsoft Access' New Monaco SQL Editor - The Good, the bad & the Ugly!

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.}

• November 26, 2024: Juan Soto- How to add tables to your Access database, pitfalls to avoid and tips for optimization
• 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 Geoffrey L. Griffith- Creating Add-ins that run in Access and Office
• December 10, 2024: Roy Kim - Data Ingesting Pipeline from Azure IOT Hub to Azure SQL DB
• December 19/20, 2024: Kent Gorrell, Crystal Long, Adrian Bell- Data Type Mapping Access to SQL Server (JUST ADDED)
• January 8, 2025: Philipp Stiefel - Developing COM Add-Ins for Microsoft Access (TOPIC JUST ANNOUNCED)
• February 05, 2025: John Mallinson - Using VBE_Extras Add-In with Access
• March 05, 2025; Alexander Denz - Topic title to be confirmed
• April 02, 2025: John Heaser - Source Control for Access & SQL Databases
• 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 (2024-11-16) and this week (2024-11-23).

The roadmap was last updated on October 4, 2024. The development priorities were last updated at the German-language AEK conference on October 20, 2024.

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 Oct '24 – March '25.

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.

1. Continued Focus on Monthly Issue Fixes: (Monthly Issue Fix Blog) Improved product quality and reliability
2. Large monitor support for forms: Improved support of Access on the latest hardware
3. Integrated source control: Simplifying the process of building mission critical Access solutions

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)