Week in Review

Week in Review: March 22, 2025

Highlights include how to search multiple fields from one text box, the release of the Access DevCon Vienna agenda, and an official list of Access bug fixes for 2025.

Mike Wolfe

Mar 22, 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.}

Official Access Blog
- Access fixes released in Versions 2501 and 2502: Details bug fixes for Monaco SQL Editor, Modern Charts, and other improvements in the latest Access versions.
Access Forever
- Access DevCon 2025 -- Agenda, by Karl Donaubauer: Outlines the complete conference agenda for Access DevCon 2025, featuring topics on Microsoft Graph, Modern Charts, TwinBasic, and AI.
- List of Access Bug Fixes in 2025, by Karl Donaubauer: Compiles all Access bug fixes released in 2025 to make the information more visible and searchable.
John Mallinson (The VBA Help)
- Sometimes, it's just the little things - #7: Are you still typing Debug.Print?!: Demonstrates how VBE_Extras allows you to type "?" followed by Tab/Enter to automatically create Debug.Print statements.
- Sometimes, it's just the little things - #8: Move lines up or down: Shows how VBE_Extras allows moving code lines up or down using Alt+Arrow keys instead of cut and paste.
Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
- ADO and DAO recordset Filter property: Explains the different ways ADO and DAO handle the Filter property in recordsets.
- DAO Workspace Transactions: Demonstrates how to use DAO Workspace transactions to prevent database corruption during complex update operations.
- Hooray, I figured out color for VBA in my emails, I think…: Shows how the ColorCode add-in for Access can be used to format VBA code with syntax highlighting in emails.
- Your Development Environment vs the Live Environment: Discusses the importance of testing Access applications in client environments before deployment to avoid performance issues.
- Red, Green, Refactor vs. Specify, Encode, Fulfill: Explores an alternative TDD methodology that focuses on specification clarity before writing tests.
Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
- The Best Web Development Choice I Ever Made!: A developer's journey from Windows to Linux for web development, highlighting the significant performance improvements gained from the switch.
- Conquering the ODBC & Data Source Administrator Bitness Issue: A guide explaining how to match ODBC driver bitness (32-bit or 64-bit) with application bitness, including the counterintuitive file locations of different Data Source Administrator versions.
- NordVPN A Company I Will Never Trust Ever Again: A cautionary tale about NordVPN's business practices, where the company implemented auto-renewal without consent and charged a 347% price increase over previous rates.
Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Putting It All Together: Email Authentication Fundamentals for Access Developers: A comprehensive guide for Access developers transitioning from Outlook automation to SMTP services, covering the fundamentals of email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- Throwback Thursday: March 20, 2025: A weekly feature highlighting past articles about "feature gates" (feature flags) in Microsoft Access and Office applications.
- IMEX DataTask Specifications and Extended File Properties with Colin Riddington: A recap of Colin Riddington's Access User Group presentation on managing both legacy and modern import/export specifications and accessing extended file properties in Microsoft Access.

Videos‌

Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- Quick Queries #32 (28:10): Microsoft Access Quick Queries #32: Null or Zero Length String, Next Business Day, BrainWave!
- Form Opening Events (20:54): Understanding the On Open, On Load, and On Current Events in Microsoft Access
- Search Multiple Fields (20:08): How to Search Multiple Fields Simultaneously in Microsoft Access Using a Single Input Box
- DLookup Tricks (16:34): Microsoft Access DLookup Tricks You Might Not Have Known About
- Kill Access (11:36): How To Automatically Kill a Frozen Microsoft Access Task Using a Batch File for Quick Resets

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}^.

March 28, 2025: Access Day: In-person conference in Redmond, WA (Speakers: Mike Wolfe, Peter Doering, George Young, Luke Chung, Kevin Bell, the Access Dev Team)
April 02, 2025: Anders Ebro - Using Class Modules in Access
April 10-11, 2025: Access DevCon Vienna (Agenda - Registration - Speakers: Access Dev Team, Karl Donaubauer, Maria Barnes, Philipp Stiefel, Adam Waller, Colin Riddington, John Mallinson, Mike Wolfe, and more TBA)
May 07, 2025: Karl Donaubauer - Update, update . . . the company is in a state! (JUST ADDED)
May 15, 2025 @ 9:30 am - 5:00 pm: In-person UKAUG 30th Anniversary Conference 2025, Imperial College London (Speakers: Armen Stein, Andrew Richards, Anders Ebro, Stuart Massey, Chris Arnold, Peter Bryant, Rod Gordon)
June 04, 2025: Colin Riddington - Large Monitor Support and Responsive Forms (NEW DATE - rescheduled from May 7)

Access Roadmap

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2025-03-15) and this week (2025-03-22).

The roadmap was last updated on March 4, 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

None listed.

Launched

NOTE: Dates listed are rollout start dates.

AUG 2024: Modern Chart Improvements
SEP 2024: Integrate Monaco framework to improve SQL editor capabilities

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)