Week in Review: November 7, 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-4.5.
- Official Access Blog
- Access bug fixes version 2510, by Linda Lu Cannon: Bug fixes for Undo/Redo commands, Monaco SQL editor syntax highlighting in dark themes, and Waterfall chart connector line visibility.
- Marcus Dieterle (LinkedIn Articles)
- Developer Helpers – 19 VBA String Functions That Every Developer Will Love!: A comprehensive toolbox of 19 VBA string manipulation functions with an integrated testing form for immediate validation and combination.
- John Mallinson (The VBA Help)
- TaskDialogIndirect ... as a progress bar: Implementation guide for using TaskDialogIndirect Windows API as a progress bar with callbacks, custom styling, and real-time updates.
- Jonathan Halder (Access JumpStart 2.0)
- Headless Access and Preventing startup recovery questions: Registry-based solution to prevent Access crash recovery prompts when running scheduled tasks in headless mode.
- Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
- Check if an Application is Running: VBA code using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to detect and optionally terminate running application processes.
- Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Eliminating Magic Numbers with Tom van Stiphout and Kim Young: Comprehensive strategies for successfully transitioning Access projects between developers through documentation, testing, and stakeholder relationship management.
- Throwback Thursday: November 6, 2025: Tips and techniques for managing Access report captions to add polish and prevent deployment oversights.
Videos
- Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- Quick Queries #65 (23:48): One of These Windows Features Might Be Why Your Microsoft Access Database Is Slow
- Sort Not Working? (10:43): Sort and Filter Not Working in Your Microsoft Access Form? Here's the Fix.
- Fitness Database
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.
- [December 03, 2025] Adolph Dupré: Using Twilio for Texting from Access
- [January 7, 2026] Neil Sargent: Spot the Difference – New Style MsgBox for Access
- [February 04, 2026] Aleksander Wojtasz: Creating an Advanced Data Grid Integrated with Access
- [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 (2025-11-01) and this week (2025-11-08).
The roadmap was last updated October 15, 2025.
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. Dates listed are "rollout start" dates.
In Development
OCT 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.DEC 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
None listed.
Development Priorities
"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.
The items listed below reflect Microsoft's order of priority and were published in the following Access Forever article, Microsoft's Plans for Access Oct '25 – March '26.
- Continued focus on monthly issue fixes, security, customer-reported bugs, etc. to improve product quality, security, reliability, and relevance. Most of our engineering hours are spent here.
- Large monitor support: Remove 22” limitation to support using Access on modern hardware.
- Large monitor support: Enable zoom slider magnification for forms.
- Large monitor support: Modernize forms to work well on large monitors.
- Time allowing, we’ll continue to work on remaining large monitor support features (support zoom in reports and design layout, automatic zooming, support multiple monitor scenarios).
- If we still have time left over in the semester, we will begin work on Git integration for source code management in Access. (Spec is in progress. We will likely roll this out in phases also beginning the second half of 2026.)
Special thanks to Karl Donaubauer for posting the updated priorities at AccessForever.org.
Upcoming End-of-Life Dates
Here are the key end-of-life dates Access developers should track:
2024
SQL Server 2014[JUL 09]
2025
Access 2016 | Access 2019 | Office 2016 | Office 2019[OCT 14]Windows 10[OCT 14]Salesforce ODBC Driver[OCT 28][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)