Week in Review: January 4, 2025

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 Conferences in 2025, by Karl Donaubauer: A comprehensive list of five Microsoft Access conferences scheduled across Europe and the USA in 2025.

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • Using the Immediate Pane in VBA debugging: A practical guide on using VBA's Immediate Pane to debug and modify variables during code execution.
  • Automating the Software Development Lifecycle: An exploration of version tracking and automated backend updates in Access development based on Kent Gorrell's YouTube presentation.
  • Working on many tasks for a customer's database: Tips for managing multiple client requests and long-term features while maintaining flexibility in development.
  • Recovering from an Access crash thanks to backups and versioning: A real-world example demonstrating the importance of backups and version control in Access development.

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • How to Use PowerShell to Change File Creation and Modification Dates: A tutorial on using PowerShell commands to modify file creation and modification timestamps.
  • Happy New Year to Microsoft Access Developers!: A New Year's greeting and message of appreciation to the Access development community.
  • Choosing Between & and + for String Concatenation in VBA: A detailed comparison of using & versus + operators for string concatenation in VBA, with focus on handling null values.

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • NEW - Monaco SQL Editor: A comprehensive guide to Access's new Monaco SQL Editor featuring syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, and advanced formatting capabilities.
    • UPDATE: One partial fix in beta version. New issue when filtering a query with comments
  • CDO EMail Tester: An application for testing and troubleshooting email functionality in Access using Collaborative Data Objects (CDO) without requiring Outlook.
    • UPDATED version with additional functionality
  • Control the Application Interface: Demonstrates various methods to control the Access interface including hiding windows, managing forms, and customizing the application window.
    • UPDATED 3 Jan 2025 - NEW VERSION - bug fixes only. No new functionality.
  • Why are the Min, Max and X buttons disabled?: Explores the behavior of modal and borderless forms in Access and provides solutions for form control and navigation.
  • AEU37: Use AI Assistants with Access: Preview of an upcoming Access Europe presentation about integrating OpenAI Assistants API with Access applications.
  • Form Page Headers & Footers: Explains the purpose and behavior of page headers and footers in Access forms, particularly in the context of printing and subforms.

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • Table Field Types with Mark Edwards: A comprehensive guide to Access table field types, their proper usage, and SQL Server compatibility considerations.
  • Throwback Thursday: January 2, 2025: A collection of favorite Allen Browne-inspired articles covering various Access development topics.
  • Custom Ribbons Using CommandBars with Adrian Bell: An Access Europe user group presentation about creating dynamic ribbon modifications using legacy CommandBars technology.

Videos‌

• Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)

  • Using Web APIs in Access (01:03:32): with George Young

• Sean MacKenzie (YouTube channel)

  • Inline Queries (14:27): How to Use Inline Queries in Microsoft Access

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • KeyDown (18:32): Using the KeyDown Event to React to Specific Keystrokes in Microsoft Access
  • KeyPress (24:56): Using the KeyPress Event to Allow or Disallow Specific Characters in Microsoft Access
  • Find in Text Box, Part 2 (16:54): How to Search for Text in a Long Text Field in Microsoft Access. Find First, Next Buttons, Part 2 (Part 1 here)

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.}

• January 8, 2025: Philipp Stiefel - Developing COM Add-Ins for Microsoft Access
• January 09, 2025: Geoffrey L. Griffith - Creating Add-ins that run in Access and Office — Part II
• January 14, 2025: Roy Kim - Data Ingesting Pipeline from Azure IOT Hub to Azure SQL DB
• January 28, 2025: Maria Barnes - Using Dictionaries and Collections to work with JSON in Access (JUST ADDED)
• February 05, 2025: John Mallinson - Using VBE_Extras Add-In with Access
• February 06, 2025: Adam Waller - Access Version Control
• February 18, 2025: Steve Owen - All about table relationships (JUST ADDED)
• March 05, 2025; Alexander Denz - AI Assistants – Bring your knowledge to the smartest AI models (TOPIC JUST ADDED)
• March 06, 2025: George Hepworth - Eliminating Magic Numbers in VBA
• April 02, 2025: John Heaser - Source Control for Access & SQL Databases
• April 10-11, 2025: Access DevCon Vienna (speakers TBA)
• 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 (2024-12-28) and this week (2025-01-04).

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)