Week in Review: April 12, 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-3.7-Sonnet.}

• John Mallinson (The VBA Help)

  • String interpolation: A function to implement string interpolation in VBA using braces to indicate targets within strings that will be replaced with values.

• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)

  • Access DevCon 9 (2025) Day 2 my reaction: A summary of the second day of Access DevCon 9, covering sessions on sales strategies, version control tools, Power Automate with VBA, twinBASIC and AI, and developer tools.
  • Access DevCon 9 (2025) Day 1 my reaction: A recap of the first day of Access DevCon 9, featuring sessions on the Access community, modern charts, Microsoft Graph API, VBE_Extras, and updates from the Microsoft Access team.
  • From Errors to Solutions: Implementing Transactions in Complex Database Imports: An exploration of using DAO transactions in a separate workspace to handle complex database imports while preventing record deletion conflicts.
  • Polymorphism in Action: Refactoring File Processing Routines in Access: A practical example of using polymorphism to refactor code for processing different file types in an Access application.
  • Count Distinct in SQL Server and Access: A comparison of how to count distinct values in SQL Server versus Microsoft Access, showing the workaround needed in Access using subqueries.

• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)

  • Saving User Settings and Preferences in Microsoft Access Database: Explores various methods for storing user preferences in Access including dedicated tables, configuration files, and registry entries.
  • Where To Turn To As The New Outlook Is Deployed And Breaks Our Applications: Provides workarounds for Access developers whose Outlook automation code breaks with the "New Outlook" deployment.
  • Using the QuickBooks REST API Via VBA -- Part 1: A comprehensive guide on implementing QuickBooks REST API authentication and token management in VBA applications.

• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)

  • Access DevCon presentations - Apr 2025: Summary of Colin's two presentations at Access DevCon 2025, including Programming Modern Charts and Access Tools for Developers with downloadable examples.
  • Access Roadmap Updated TWICE (Apr 2025): Announces two major upcoming Microsoft Access features: a zoom slider magnification (10-500%) and removal of the 22.75-inch width limit for forms and reports to better support large monitors.
  • Modern Charts 3 - VBA Support (UPDATED): Detailed guide to the new VBA support for modern charts in Access, including code examples for changing chart types, sort orders, and other properties at runtime.

• Crystal Long (Ms Access Gurus | Access Access Newsletter)

  • Word Field information: Tool that uses Access VBA to document all field information from an active Word document into a new Word document with details like position, parameters, and switches.

• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)

  • twinBASIC and AI: DevCon 2025: Resources and links from Mike's presentation at Access DevCon 2025 about twinBASIC and AI, including previous presentations and related articles.
  • Throwback Thursday: April 10, 2025: Curated collection of past articles about testing, including Python-inspired doc tests, B-BEAR T-SQL testing technique, and SQL Server unit testing.
  • Whisper Desktop: Free Speech-to-Text in Under 5 Minutes: Quick start guide for installing and using Whisper Desktop, a Windows application for running OpenAI's open-source Whisper speech recognition model locally.

Videos‌

• Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)

  • Get and Post with JSON using Microsoft Access and VBA (28:42): with Neil Sargent (+ theDBguy)
  • Using Vibe Coding to Create a Microsoft Access Database (01:27:34): with Juan Soto
  • When your project is going off the rails ... What to do? (44:08): with Juan Soto
  • Fixing slowness issues with Access and SQL Server (54:07): with Juan Soto

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)

  • Quick Queries #35 (13:55): Microsoft Access Quick Queries #35: Limiting Combo Box Data, AutoNumbers as Order Numbers
  • Default Country (08:48): How To Set a Default Country and Update Blank Entries to USA in Microsoft Access
  • Reset Database (14:57): How to Delete Data and Reset AutoNumbers to Make a Blank Copy of Your Access Database
  • Make Table (19:00): How to Create a Make Table Query in Microsoft Access

• Edcelle John Gulfan (YouTube channel)

  • Bar graph in form (05:32): Bar graph in Continuous form of Microsoft Access

Select Open Source Projects: New Releases

• MS Access VCS Addin
  • v4.1.2 Fix path issues
  • v4.1.1 Fix UNC path support, improve query output

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.}

• May 07, 2025: Karl Donaubauer - Update, update...the company is in a state!
• 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

Access Roadmap

The following changes were made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2025-04-05) and this week (2025-04-12):

In Development

• JUN 2025: Add zoom slider magnification to Microsoft Access: Access will add magnification slider (10% to 500%) in lower right of the application, similar to the feature in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It will also be keyboard accessible and available on the ribbon.

The roadmap was last updated on April 10, 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.

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

• JUN 2025: Add zoom slider magnification to Microsoft Access: Access will add magnification slider (10% to 500%) in lower right of the application, similar to the feature in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It will also be keyboard accessible and available on the ribbon.
• JUL 2025: Modernize Access Forms and Reports to work well on Large Format Monitors: Remove the 22-inch size limit and modernize Access forms and reports work well on large format monitors and provide responsive behavior for different form factors.

Rolling Out

None listed.

Launched

NOTE: Dates listed are rollout start dates.

• AUG 2024: Modern Chart Improvements: A top ask from customers is to modernize Access charts and to support better data visualization in Access. To satisfy this user request, we are integrating a new charting package called “Ivy” into Access. Ivy is a charting package written by the Office DVX team that is currently used in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
• SEP 2024: Integrate Monaco framework to improve SQL editor capabilities: The Monaco Editor is the fully featured code editor from VS Code with standard IDE functionality such as syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, and autocomplete.

Upcoming End-of-Life Dates

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

2024

• [JUL 01] Teams Classic Client
• [JUL 09] SQL Server 2014
• [OCT 01] Auto-migration of Classic Outlook begins for personal accounts
• [OCT 08] Windows 11 version 22H2

2025

• [JAN 01] Auto-migration of Classic Outlook begins for Small/Medium Business users
• [OCT 14] Access 2016 | Access 2019 | Office 2016 | Office 2019
• [OCT 14] Windows 10
• [NOV 11] Windows 11 version 23H2

2026

• [APR 01] Auto-migration of Classic Outlook begins for Enterprise users
• [JUL 14] SQL Server 2016
• [OCT 13] Access 2021 | Office 2021
• [OCT 13] Windows 11 version 24H2

2027

• [JAN 12] Windows Server 2016
• [OCT 12] SQL Server 2017

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)