Week in Review

Week in Review: May 31, 2025

Highlights include adding timestamps to digitally signed Access projects, tips to improve Access/Windows scrollbars, and a report from the global data event in Valencia.

Mike Wolfe

May 31, 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.}

Access Forever
- From Local Meetups to a Global Data Celebration by the Sea, by Juanjo Luna and Rafael Andrada (McPegasus): A recap of the International Data Event in Valencia that evolved from a local Microsoft Access meetup into a global tech gathering with over 50 sessions and 28 Microsoft MVPs.
Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
- Form filtering using unbound text boxes continued: An advanced implementation of form filtering using classes to handle multiple filter controls with automatic event handling and custom filter expressions.
- Basic Filtering with form text boxes: A simple implementation of real-time filtering on a subform using an unbound text box with the OnChange event.
- CDO email using a queue and emailing from one server: A solution for implementing a centralized email queue system using CDO that allows scheduling and sending emails from a dedicated server.
- The importance of being disciplined: Personal insights about maintaining self-discipline as an independent consultant through motivation, goal-setting, and revitalization.
Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
- Wider Scrollbars For Improved User Experience: A registry-based solution to increase scrollbar width and visibility in Windows applications for improved usability.
- Extracting the Whole Number From a Decimal in VBA: A comparison of different VBA techniques for extracting the integer portion from decimal values, including Int(), Fix(), and the integer division operator.
- Auto Orienting Images via VBA: Two VBA solutions for automatically correcting image orientation based on EXIF metadata using either ImageMagick or Windows Image Acquisition (WIA).
Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
- Monaco SQL Editor Improvements Now Rolling Out: Describes three significant improvements to the Monaco SQL Editor including partial execution of query SQL, pretty formatting, and faster loading times.
- Code Signing VBA Projects with Timestamp: Explains how to add timestamps to signed VBA projects so they remain signed even after the code signing certificate expires.
- VBA Project Signing 2: Q+A (UPDATED): A follow-up article addressing questions about VBA project signing in Access, including effects on ACCDE files, decompilation behavior, and recent tests about signing projects with compilation errors.
- Monaco SQL Editor (UPDATED): Comprehensive guide to the Monaco SQL Editor in Access 365 with details on features, known issues, and fixed issues.
Crystal Long (Ms Access Gurus)
- IIf vs Choose vs Switch: Compares the IIf(), Choose(), and Switch() functions used in Microsoft Access expressions and VBA, with examples and use cases for each.
Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Throwback Thursday: May 29, 2025: Weekly feature revisiting notable blog posts with a focus on guard clauses and defensive programming techniques.
- Selling Access with SQL Server Jobs with Juan Soto: Recap of Juan Soto's presentation on building a seven-figure Microsoft Access consulting practice from scratch.

Videos‌

Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- Attendance, Part 1 (18:52): How to Track Attendance in Microsoft Access Students, Employees, etc.
- Attendance, Part 2 (16:28): How to Track Attendance in Microsoft Access Students, Employees, etc., Part 2
- Enabled, Part 1 (09:55): How to Use the Enabled Property to Allow/Disallow Data Entry in Specific Fields in Microsoft Access
- Enabled, Part 2 (12:27): Use the Enabled Property to Allow/Disallow Data Entry in Specific Fields in Microsoft Access, Part 2

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}^.

[June 04, 2025] Domenico Ruggiero: Orchestrating Office: Amplifying Access with Multi-Application Automation
[June 05, 2025] John Colby: Preparing your Access Database Application for Deployment — Tools and Tips
[July 02, 2025] Pete Poppe: Faking ‘Non-Normal’ User Interfaces with Normal Data
[August 06, 2025] Colin Riddington: Large Monitor Support and Responsive Forms
[September 03, 2025] Adam Waller: Topic TBD
[October 01, 2025] Marcus Dieterle: High impact – Custom dialogs and mini-notifications
[November 05, 2025] Aleksander Wojtasz: Topic TBD

Access Roadmap

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2025-05-24) and this week (2025-05-31).

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)