Week in Review: August 30, 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-Sonnet-4.}

• Access Forever
  • Bugs, Features, Changes -- Aug 2025, by Colin Riddington: Overview of minor bugs, changes, and new features for Access in July and August 2025, including HTML export issues, Monaco editor improvements, and forum closures.
• John Mallinson (The VBA Help)
  • Flashing the taskbar icon and window using the Windows API: Demonstrates how to use FlashWindow and FlashWindowEx Windows API functions to flash the taskbar icon and window for an application to bring attention to it.
• Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
  • TransferSpreadsheet Not Cutting It? I Use This VBA Routine Instead: Provides a custom VBA subroutine that copies Access query or table data to Excel cells using arrays for faster performance when DoCmd.TransferSpreadsheet falls short.
  • Avoiding Exclusive Access in Access: My Strategy for Seamless Updates: Outlines a strategy for updating Access databases without requiring exclusive access by creating new backend databases and using an application table to manage the transition.
• Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
  • Problem with Windows 11 Update KB5063878: Reports on a serious Windows 11 update causing SSDs and hard drives to disappear from systems, lose formatting, and corrupt data, with recommendations to avoid or rollback the update.
  • 'Fixes or workarounds for recent issues in Access' Webpage -- No More: Discusses Microsoft's quiet abandonment of their dedicated Access fixes webpage in favor of blog posts, missing the opportunity to create a truly useful resource.
  • How to Automatically Add a BCC in Outlook for Specific Recipients or Domains: Provides VBA code to automatically add BCC recipients to Outlook emails when sending to specific addresses or domains for archiving and compliance purposes.
• Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
  • Teaching Callouts in Office Apps: Explains the new teaching callout feature in Office apps that alerts users to significant changes and how these callouts are managed through registry settings.
  • Monaco SQL Editor Improvements Now Rolling Out: Covers three major improvements to the Monaco SQL Editor including partial query execution, enhanced SQL formatting, and much faster loading times rolling out through 2025.
  • Monaco SQL Editor (UPDATED): A comprehensive guide to the new Monaco SQL Editor in Microsoft Access, featuring syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, and various improvements along with known issues and fixes.
  • How Speedy Loading Works in Monaco: An explanation of how the Monaco SQL Editor now loads almost instantly through pre-loading functionality that runs WebView2 processes in the background during Access idle time.
  • Access Bug Summary - July/Aug 2025: A comprehensive summary of Access and Office bugs reported during July and August 2025, including symptoms, reporting details, and resolution status.
  • Select All Text in a Textbox: Demonstrates how to programmatically select all text in a textbox using SelStart and SelLength functions rather than relying on unpredictable keyboard shortcuts.
  • Select All Data in a Form: Explains how to use Ctrl+A to select all data in Access forms for copying to other applications like Excel or Notepad.
• Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
  • Bug Alert: Assertion Failed on RegExp Calls in Access 2508: Reports a Visual C++ assertion error occurring with RegExp Replace() calls in Access version 2508 and provides a workaround by wrapping the replacement pattern in parentheses.
  • Throwback Thursday: August 28, 2025: Weekly feature revisiting past articles, this edition exploring three different ways to determine variable types in VBA using TypeName, TypeOf, and VarType.

Videos‌

• Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
  • Quick Queries #55 (24:51): Migrating to SQL Server, Linked Tables and Front End Structure
  • Microsoft Access Fitness Database:
    • Part 28 (14:47): Using BeforeInsert Event to Set Timestamps
    • Part 29 (20:05): Search As You Type Combo Box Filtering
    • Part 30 (18:39): Escape Double Quotes in Strings, Adding Records With VBA
  • Access Tutorial Series (03:49): The Best Microsoft Access Tutorial Series You're Probably Not Watching
  • Recordset Clone (18:56): RecordsetClone vs DoCmd.FindRecord - a Better Method for Finding Records in Microsoft Access
  • Fitness Database Announcement (03:05): Fitness Database Update: Still Working On It, Plus Fresh Access Videos Coming Soon

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.}

• [September 03, 2025] Adam Waller: Version Control for the Sole Developer – Why it Matters
• [September 04, 2025] Greg Regan: Updated Control Tip Text
• [September 09, 2025] Juan Soto: SQL Server with Access Academy (Part 1) (JUST ADDED)
• [September 30, 2025] Crystal Long & Adrian Bell: Using Custom and Built-in Functions in Expressions
• [October 01, 2025] Marcus Dieterle: High impact – Custom dialogs and mini-notifications
• [October 28, 2025] Colin Riddington: A Masterclass in Access Security
• [November 05, 2025] Aleksander Wojtasz: Topic TBD
• [December 03, 2025] Adolph Dupré: Topic TBD
• [January 07, 2026] Ynte Jan Kundersma: Using Power Automate with Office Apps
• [March 04, 2026] Chris Arnold: Using Disconnected (In-Memory) ADO Recordsets in Access

Access Roadmap

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2025-08-23) and this week (2025-08-30).

The roadmap was last updated the week of August 9, 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

• 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.

• 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
• [OCT 28] Salesforce ODBC Driver
• [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)