Week in Review: February 22, 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
- Hybrid Application for Indian Children, by Karl Donaubauer: Showcases a hybrid Access/Power Apps solution managing data for an Austrian charity helping Indian street children.
John Mallinson (The VBA Help)
- Add / remove / re-order parameters ... and update corresponding arguments: Describes VBE_Extras functionality for managing procedure parameters while automatically updating all corresponding argument references.
Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
- Custom tags for form controls – Beginning to code the solution: Demonstrates implementing a default member in a class to enable custom syntax for form control tags.
- Custom tags for form controls – further refining a desired syntax: Explores alternative approaches to implementing custom tags for form controls using dictionaries.
- Custom Tags For Custom tags for controls – reimagined code: Compares old and new implementations of custom control tags to evaluate code simplification benefits.
- Using RecordsetClone to modify other records on a subform: Shows how to use RecordsetClone to update multiple records sharing the same criteria on a subform.
- The Proxy Design Pattern in Access VBA: Demonstrates implementing the Proxy pattern to separate database interactions from business logic in Access forms.
Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
- The Microsoft Roadmap Got a Minor Facelift: Discusses cosmetic changes to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap site and updates to the Access filters URL.
- The Microsoft Access Roadmap Was Actually Updated, A Little Bit At Least: Reports on the status update of the Monaco SQL editor integration from 'in development' to 'rolling out'.
Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
- Database Analyzer Pro: Details a comprehensive tool for analyzing external Access databases, featuring extensive reporting capabilities and database structure analysis.
Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Throwback Thursday: February 20, 2025: Explores favorite AutoHotkey scripts for Access development, including window management and productivity enhancements.
- Enhanced MsgBox and Forms with Olaf Nöhring and André Minhorst: Covers two presentations featuring an enhanced message box tool and professional calendar management solutions for Access.
- Access Frameworks with John Colby: Examines the importance of development frameworks in Microsoft Access applications and how to implement them effectively.

Videos‌

Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)
- Using Dictionaries and Collections to work with JSON in Access (01:03:47): with Maria Barnes, Neil Sargent, and Leo theDBguy
- Access Version Control – Highlights along the Journey (01:17:41): with Adam Waller
- Creating Add-ins that run in Access and Office (01:31:18): with Geoffrey L. Griffith — Part II
Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- Quick Queries #28 (20:45): MS Access Tutors, Print to Edge, Security, Updater, More!
- Whole Months, Part 1 (16:14): How To Calculate Exact Whole Months Between Dates in Microsoft Access
- Whole Months, Part 2 (17:34): How To Calculate Exact Whole Months Between Dates in Microsoft Access, Part 2
Kelly Torres (YouTube channel)
- Google Forms and Access (15:51): How to Use Google Forms with Microsoft Access

Select Open Source Projects: New Releases

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}^.

February 25, 2025: Neil Sargent and Leo (theDBguy) - Parsing JSON Data using VBA
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
March 28, 2025: Access Day: In-person conference in Redmond, WA (Mike Wolfe, other speakers TBA)
April 02, 2025: Anders Ebro - Using Class Modules in Access
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)

Access Roadmap

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2025-02-15) and this week (2025-02-22).

The roadmap was last updated on February 13, 2025. 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

None listed.

Rolling Out

SEP 2024: Integrate Monaco framework to improve SQL editor capabilities

Launched

AUG 2024: Modern Chart Improvements

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)