Week in Review

Week in Review: January 17, 2026

Highlights include advanced techniques to use ICO/PNG/JPG/BMP files as form icons, how to create theme-aware forms, and a list of upcoming Access conferences in 2026.

Mike Wolfe

Jan 17, 2026 • 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-Opus-4.5 and Claude-Sonnet-4.5.}

Access Forever
- Access Conferences in 2026, by Karl Donaubauer: A comprehensive listing of five Access conferences scheduled for 2026, including details on locations, dates, languages, and organizers.
Daniel Pineault (DEVelopers HUT)
- Outlook Won't Open? Outlook.exe Running but No Window; Here's the Fix: A troubleshooting guide explaining how storing PST files in OneDrive-synced folders causes Outlook to hang and how to resolve it by moving files locally.
- QuickBooks Documentation Headaches: A brief critique of inaccurate QuickBooks Online documentation that incorrectly describes how to switch between company files.
- Quick Assist Not Working Minimum Security Requirements Not Met Error Explained: An investigation into Microsoft Quick Assist's sudden failure with security requirement errors and a discussion of alternative remote support tools.
- Another Feedback Portal Suggestion Vanishes Into Thin Air: A frustration-filled account of how Microsoft Access Feedback Portal suggestions disappear without warning, undermining community trust and participation.
- How To Add a Custom Icon To 'Pop Up' Form and 'Overlapping Windows' Forms: A comprehensive technical guide showing multiple VBA methods to set custom icons on Access forms using Windows APIs and GDI+.
Colin Riddington (Isladogs on Access)
- Create Theme-Aware Forms in Access: A detailed tutorial with example code demonstrating how to automatically update Access form colors to match the current Office UI theme.
- Copy Message Box Text to Clipboard: A quick tip explaining that you can copy the entire contents of a VBA MsgBox to the clipboard using Ctrl+C, though this doesn't work for Access's built-in messages.
- Customize The Access Message Box: An exploration of Microsoft's new colorful message box design for Access, custom MsgBox alternatives including Neil Sargent's replica, and how to adjust message box appearance using Windows Accessibility settings.
Mike Wolfe (NoLongerSet)
- Throwback Thursday: January 15, 2026: A curated collection revisiting articles on storing and displaying time spans in Access, plus developer humor from around the web.
- Access Version Control Add-in Deep Dive with Adam Waller: A comprehensive recap of Adam Waller's presentation on his nine-year journey developing a sophisticated version control system for Microsoft Access databases.

Videos‌

Access User Group Recordings (YouTube channel)
- SQL Server Academy with Access Part 3 - Stored Procedures (01:08:26): with Juan Soto
Colin Riddington [Isladogs] (YouTube channel)
- Create Theme-Aware Forms in Access (04:18)
Richard Rost (YouTube channel)
- Tab Control Madness! (41:56): A Cleaner Technique That Avoids The Headaches (QQ #75)
- Copy Web Page Data, Part 1 (17:37): How To Copy Web Page Data Into Microsoft Access From Sites Like Amazon And Walmart, Part 1
- Copy Web Page Data, Part 2 (12:24): How To Copy Web Page Data Into Microsoft Access From Sites Like Amazon And Walmart, Part 2
- Short Circuit Evaluation (12:50): How To Fix Divide By Zero Errors In Microsoft Access VBA
- Links In Rich Text (15:01): How To Add Clickable Website, Email, And File Links In A Notes Field In Microsoft Access

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}^.

[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
[March 27, 2026] Access Day (in person in Redmond, WA): speakers TBA (JUST ADDED)
[April 1, 2026] Peter Cole: Using vbWatchdog with Access
[April 16-17, 2026] Access DevCon Vienna (virtual): speakers TBA (JUST ADDED)
[May 6, 2026] Tim Finch: Grid Lanes
[June 3, 2026] Kevin Bell: SQL Server Tips and Tricks for Access Developers
[September 2, 2026] John Mallinson: Working with the Windows API

Access Roadmap

There were no changes made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2026-01-10) and this week (2026-01-17).

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

~~[JUL 09]~~ SQL Server 2014

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)