Week in Review

Week in Review: April 25, 2026

Highlights include interfacing with the Outlook Calendar from VBA, an ODBC bug in the legacy SQL Server driver, and support for returning Access version info via SysCmd.

Mike Wolfe

• 6 min read
Week in Review: April 25, 2026

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.

Videos

New to Me

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

An early attempt to convert an Access application to Blazor using AI (via YouTube):

According to the presenters, this technique gets you 85-95% of the way to a working solution in a brand new language.

And then all you have to do as a developer is perform those final few tweaks to provide the remaining 50% of functionality.

This looks like the sort of service that will sell really well to IT executives (CTOs, CIOs, CISOs, etc.), but actual end users will hate it.

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.

  • [April 28, 2026] Maria Barnes: Zooming in Access (JUST ADDED)
  • [May 6, 2026] Tim Finch: Grid Lanes
  • [May 7, 2026] John Colozzi: Access Isn’t Dead. It Finally Got a “Co-Pilot”. (No. Not that one.)
  • [May 14, 2026] UKAUG App-in-a-Day Conference: Birmingham, UK (JUST ADDED)
    • Armen Stein
    • Anders Ebro
    • Kevin Bell
    • Peter Bryant
    • Steve Girling
    • Andrew Richards
  • [May 19, 2026] Juan Soto: Integrate Git into your AI environment
  • [June 3, 2026] Kevin Bell: SQL Server Tips and Tricks for Access Developers
  • [June 9, 2026] Juan Soto: Use AI to build complex features in Access
  • [August 5, 2026] Marcus Dieterle: Use the Edge browser control to extend Access
  • [September 2, 2026] John Mallinson: Working with the Windows API

Access Roadmap

The following changes were made to the roadmap between the Week in Review last week (2026-04-18) and this week (2026-04-25).

  • Rollout date changed from APR 2026 to MAY 2026 for the Zoom Slider feature.
  • "...in Access forms, tables, and queries" added to the end of the Zoom Slider feature description to clarify which objects will receive initial zoom support.

The roadmap was last updated April 20, 2026.

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

  • MAY 2026: 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 in Access forms, tables, and queries.
  • JUN 2026: Modernize Access Forms and Reports to work well on Large Format Monitors: Remove the 22-inch size limit and modernize Access forms and reports [to] 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.

  1. 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.
  2. Large monitor support: Remove 22” limitation to support using Access on modern hardware.
  3. Large monitor support: Enable zoom slider magnification for forms.
  4. Large monitor support: Modernize forms to work well on large monitors.
  5. 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).
  6. 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

2025

2026

2027

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

2031

2033

2034

Ongoing

Date TBD

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All original code samples by Mike Wolfe are licensed under CC BY 4.0