Week in Review: December 7, 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.}

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • What is pair or mob programming? Why do it at all?: Explores the goals and benefits of collaborative programming approaches like pair and mob programming.
  • Some vanilla VBA error handling scenarios: Explains different VBA error handling techniques for single procedures, nested functions, and error handlers.
  • Error Handling in Access JumpStart: Discusses error handling strategies in libraries versus application code.
  • Pair Programming basics: Covers options and setup for pair programming sessions, both in-person and remote.
  • Playing well with other VBA developers: Proposes collaborative coding through pair/mob programming for Access developers.

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • Understanding Data Normalization: Bringing Order to Database Chaos: Explains database normalization concepts and their practical implementation in Microsoft Access.
  • Navigating the Transition: Adapting VBA Procedures for New Outlook Compatibility: Provides solutions for adapting VBA code to work with both classic and New Outlook.
  • Sanitizing Ingested Data: Taming the Wild Unicode Jungle: Presents a VBA function for removing non-printable characters from strings.
  • Unveiling the Hidden Characters in Your Strings: Demonstrates handling strings containing unexpected characters and Unicode oddities.

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • NEW - Monaco SQL Editor (UPDATED): UPDATE 3 Dec 2024: Added details of newly discovered bugs and details of known issues that have been fixed.

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • Breaking Changes: New Outlook Auto-Migration Begins January 2025: Analysis of Microsoft's timeline for automatically migrating users to New Outlook starting January 2025, with guidance on preparing for the loss of COM/VBA automation support.
  • Throwback Thursday: December 5, 2024: Weekly roundup highlighting past articles about enhancing TempVars with type safety, IntelliSense, and compile-time checking.
  • Intro to the Monaco SQL Editor with Maria Barnes: Overview of an Access User Group presentation demonstrating the features, limitations and practical considerations of the new Monaco SQL editor integration in Access.
  • Migration Planning - Access to SQL Server: Summary of Kent Gorrell's comprehensive presentation on the critical planning stages and considerations for migrating Access databases to SQL Server.

Videos‌

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • Remove Time (16:15): How to Remove Time Part from a Date/Time Field in Microsoft Access
  • VBA With (11:10): Streamlining Your Microsoft Access VBA Code with the With Keyword
  • Combo Box Shows ID (18:39): How to Display Text Instead of ID Numbers in Microsoft Access Combo Boxes
  • Totals Not Saved (21:32): Why Storing Calculated Values in Microsoft Access Can Cause Problems

• Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)

  • Get a Sub-Directory Listing Using VBA (12:53)
  • Get a File Listing Using VBA (13:26)
  • Creating an Image Gallery In Microsoft Access (22:42)

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.}

• 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
• January 02, 2025: George Hepworth - Eliminating Magic Numbers in VBA
• January 8, 2025: Philipp Stiefel - Developing COM Add-Ins for Microsoft Access
• February 05, 2025: John Mallinson - Using VBE_Extras Add-In with Access
• February 06, 2025: Adam Waller - Access Version Control
• March 05, 2025; Alexander Denz - Topic title to be confirmed
• April 02, 2025: John Heaser - Source Control for Access & SQL Databases
• May 07, 2025: Colin Riddington - Large Monitor Support and Responsive Forms
• May 15, 2025 @ 9:30 am - 5:00 pm: In-person UKAUG 30th Anniversary Conference 2025, Imperial College London (Armen Stein, other speakers TBA)
• June 04, 2025: Anders Ebro - Using Class Modules

Access Roadmap

No changes were made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2024-11-30) and this week (2024-12-07).

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)