Week in Review

Week in Review: January 11, 2025

Highlights include creating COM add-ins with VB.Net, deploying Access updates, sorting MVFs, a current Access User Group list, and a new recurring section on End-of-Life dates.

Mike Wolfe

Jan 11, 2025 • 5 min read

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 User Groups 2025, by Maria Barnes: A comprehensive overview of Access user groups worldwide meeting in 2025, including virtual and in-person gatherings.
Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
- Access Fields bound to a function – updating once or per record: Explains how functions bound to fields in queries, forms or reports only calculate once unless they reference a field from the recordset.
- How to programmatically tell the difference between changing a combo box by typing or by choosing from the dropdown: Details how to detect whether a combo box value was changed via typing or dropdown selection using KeyPress and Change events.
- Forms that can't write to records – Access and it's usually helpful Lookup_ prefix: Describes how an unindexed lookup field referenced in a form's Order By property can silently make the form read-only.
- Do you use "Set"? Make sure you destroy it when you're done!: Explains why explicitly setting object variables to Nothing is important for proper cleanup in Access VBA code.
- Do you have a deployment process?: Discusses the importance of automating Access application deployment processes and recommends using scripts and tools like SSESetup.
Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
- AEU35: Developing COM Add-Ins for Access: A presentation by Philipp Stiefel explaining how to create COM add-ins to extend Microsoft Access functionality using Visual Basic .Net.
Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Image Cataloguer in Access with Chris Arnold: A demonstration of an Access-based image cataloguing solution that combines drag-and-drop functionality with automated metadata tagging using ExifTool.
- Throwback Thursday: January 9, 2025: A collection of articles exploring the VBA DoEvents function, including what it is, how it works, and best practices for its use.
- Using Web APIs in Access with George Young (2024 Edition): An updated presentation on integrating Web APIs into Access applications using the VBA-Web library with practical examples and implementation tips.

Videos‌

Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)
- Developing COM Add-Ins for Microsoft Access (01:11:51): with Philipp Stiefel
Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- ActiveForm (20:32): How to Use ActiveForm to Determine the Previous Form in Microsoft Access
- Open Last Customer (20:57): How to Add a Button to a Microsoft Access Form to Reopen the Previous Record
- Global Status Function (13:56): How to Make My Status Function Global so it Works from Anywhere in your Microsoft Access Database
- Ctrl-A: Select Long Text (16:49): How to Use Ctrl-A to Select All Text in Long Text Box in Microsoft Access
Daniel Pineault (YouTube channel)
- Sorting MVFs (12:17): How To Sort Microsoft Access MultiValued Fields (MVF)
Nifty Access [Tony Hine, aka Uncle Gizmo] (YouTube channel)
- Next Previous Quit - Skip (03:09)

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}^{. Not all links below include the start time and time zone. For that information, check out this handy reference guide from Access MVP Maria Barnes over at AccessForever.org:}^{Access User Groups 2025}^.

January 14, 2025: Roy Kim - Data Ingesting Pipeline from Azure IOT Hub to Azure SQL DB
January 21, 2025: Steve Owen - All about table relationships (NEW DATE)
January 28, 2025: Maria Barnes - Using Dictionaries and Collections to work with JSON in Access
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~~ (Moved to 21 Jan 25)
March 05, 2025; Alexander Denz - AI Assistants – Bring your knowledge to the smartest AI models
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 (2025-01-04) and this week (2025-01-11).

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.

Continued Focus on Monthly Issue Fixes: (Monthly Issue Fix Blog) Improved product quality and reliability
Large monitor support for forms: Improved support of Access on the latest hardware
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)

Upcoming End-of-Life Dates

Here are the key end-of-life dates Access developers should track:

2029

[JAN 09] Windows Server 2019
[OCT 09] Access 2024 | Outlook 2024
[OCT 09 (or later)] Classic Outlook
- See "Edit 8/12/2024" at top of this article for official clarification that "both perpetual and subscription [i.e., MS 365] versions of Outlook will be supported until 2029"
- Support for Classic Outlook is guaranteed at least through 9 Oct 2029; it may be extended beyond this date

2030

[JAN 08] SQL Server 2019

2031

[OCT 14] Windows Server 2022

2033

[JAN 11] SQL Server 2022

2034

[OCT 10] Windows Server 2025

Ongoing

Microsoft 365 (with subscription)

Date TBD

Complete removal of VBScript from Windows OS (Microsoft Announces the Death of VBScript)