Week in Review

Week in Review: April 26, 2025

Highlights include the public release of 2 Access DevCon Vienna recordings, VBA to check the validity of an XML file, and an introduction to code katas.

Mike Wolfe

Apr 26, 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-3.7-Sonnet.}

Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
- Why use code katas?: An exploration of the benefits of repeating code katas to solidify concepts and improve coding skills for both beginner and experienced developers.
- Super Simple Code Kata: A demonstration of a basic VBA code kata using RubberDuckVBA to implement test-driven development for a simple integer-to-string conversion function.
- What are code katas, and how can you use classes in real world scenarios?: A brief introduction to code katas with references to resources for practicing and improving VBA skills including classes in real-world scenarios.
- Version Control Systems allow quick pivots in design: A real-world example of how version control systems make it easier to pivot development direction when project requirements change.
Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
- VBA Function to Determine if a File is a Valid XML File: A comprehensive guide to three different methods for validating XML files in VBA, with the primary approach being to attempt to load the file with MSXML.
Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
- Better Date Picker (UPDATED AGAIN!): A feature-rich replacement for Access's built-in date picker that includes week numbers, automatic form resizing, and multi-language support through version 1.72.
Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Throwback Thursday: April 24, 2025: A weekly roundup highlighting previous articles about file system operations including path joining, temporary path retrieval, folder creation, and file existence verification.
- Microsoft Graph API with Maria Barnes: A summary of Maria Barnes' Access DevCon Vienna presentation on using Microsoft Graph API as an alternative to Outlook automation when COM/VBA support is removed from "New Outlook".
- Managing VBA's Case-Change Chaos: The 80/20 Approach to Smoother Access Version Control: A practical approach to mitigating VBA's automatic case-changing behavior in version control by ignoring case-only differences when detecting file changes.

Videos‌

Karl Donaubauer (YouTube channel)
- Access DevCon 2025 - twinBASIC Update (19:44): with Mike Wolfe
- Access DevCon 2025 - The Battle of the VCS Add-Ins (51:39): with Philipp Stiefel and Adam Waller
Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- Access Developer 50 (05:40): Class Modules Part 1, Encapsulation, Properties & Methods
- Quick Queries #37 (23:38): Microsoft Access Quick Queries #37: Order By or Order By On First, Access Database on the Web
- Character/Word Substitutions (13:09): Clean Up Bad Characters in Text Fields Using a Substitution Table in Microsoft Access
- Do Records Exist? (19:13): Check If Records Exist in Microsoft Access: DLookup vs DCount vs Recordset
- Tag Property (15:28): How to Use the Tag Property to Display Helpful Information in Microsoft Access
- Edit Mode, Part 2 (17:44): How to Lock Specific Fields Using the Tag Property in Microsoft Access

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}^.

[April 29, 2025] Maria Barnes: The State of Access
[May 01, 2025] Leverage SQL Server Stored Procedures and other code with PowerApps and (some) Web Apps
[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

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2025-04-19) and this week (2025-04-26).

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.

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

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:

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)