Week in Review

Week in Review: June 28, 2025

Highlights include an update to the Access Roadmap, MS365 forums moving from Microsoft Answers to Microsoft Q&A, and using CTEs in SQL Server.

Mike Wolfe

Jun 28, 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-Sonnet-4.}

Access Forever
- Bugs, Features, Changes -- June 2025, by Karl Donaubauer: A monthly overview of recent Microsoft Access bugs (including button caption issues and Monaco SQL editor problems), feature roadmap delays, and changes to update channels and support forums.
Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
- Mastering CROSS JOIN in SQL Server: From Cartesian Products to Reusing Calculated Columns: An exploration of CROSS JOIN functionality in SQL Server, covering both generating Cartesian products for combinations and reusing calculated columns without repeating complex formulas.
- Simplifying Complex SQL Logic with CTEs in SQL Server: A guide to using Common Table Expressions (CTEs) to break down complex SQL queries into manageable, readable steps with examples ranging from simple filtering to multi-level calculated columns.
Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
- Microsoft Access Roadmap Items Delayed!: Microsoft has postponed two key Access roadmap features (zoom slider and large monitor support) by 2-3 months from their original June/July 2025 delivery dates.
- Determine The Size of Access Attachments: VBA code examples showing how to determine the file size of Access database attachments without saving them to disk first.
- Microsoft Answers Is Being Retired: Microsoft is migrating Office and MS365 forums from Microsoft Answers to Microsoft Q&A, creating concerns about the loss of organized categories and slower performance.
Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
- Access Roadmap Updated TWICE (Apr 2025): Microsoft announces zoom slider magnification and large monitor support for Access forms and reports, with rollout delayed to September 2025.
- Disappearing images and captions on buttons (FIXED): Documents a bug in Microsoft Access Current Channel Preview version 2506 where button captions and images disappeared due to corrupted Picture Caption Arrangement properties, which was subsequently fixed in build 18925.20092.
Crystal Long (Ms Access Gurus)
- Select Previous or Next choice in List: VBA procedure to programmatically navigate through combo box and listbox choices using previous/next buttons with optional cycling.
Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Using Class Modules in the Real World with Anders Ebro: Anders Ebro demonstrates how to transform repetitive Access code into elegant, maintainable solutions using class modules and event-driven architecture.
- Throwback Thursday: June 27, 2025: Weekly roundup featuring articles on software maintenance best practices, code readability, and developer humor.

Videos‌

George Hepworth (YouTube channel)
- From Access to PowerApps: Replicating Northwind: A new series from one of the core team members of the Northwind 2.0 template redesign project.
Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- Quick Queries #46 (21:39): Unique Fields, Composite Keys, Monaco SQL, User Security, More!
- Choose Function (13:46): How To Use the Choose Function for Simplifying Value Selection in Microsoft Access
- Fiscal Sort (17:43): How to Sort Dates by Fiscal Quarter in Microsoft Access
- Read-Only (12:12): How to Make a Read-Only Form in Microsoft Access

Select Open Source Projects: New Releases

Rubberduck
- v2.5.92.6381-pre: fix for "Rubberduck cannot load if using vba dark mode"

New to Me

^{This section includes content I discovered this week that has been around for a while.}

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}^.

[July 02, 2025] Pete Poppe: Faking ‘Non-Normal’ User Interfaces with Normal Data
[August 06, 2025] Colin Riddington: New and Forthcoming Features in Access
[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

The following changes were made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2025-06-21) and this week (2025-06-28):

Add zoom slider magnification to Microsoft Access: Rollout start changed from JUN 2025 to SEP 2025
Modernize Access Forms and Reports to work well on Large Format Monitors: Rollout start changed from JUL 2025 to SEP 2025

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

SEP 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.
SEP 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)