Access 365 v2206 (15330.20196) report formatting regression

[Mindflux]

Updated this morning, ZERO notes about Access updates so I figured I was safe:

Went to generate a report... group header usually looks something like:

https://imgur.com/HFNKqy6

Now looks something like:

https://imgur.com/8lQhc90

Confirmed a rollback to 2205 (15225.20288) fixes it.

I'm not doing anything weird or zany with the border thickness or border style, those are just set on the controls themself and no VBA is changing them or anything like that.

 

[Mindflux]

Bug identified by Microsoft. A fix is coming "soon".

 

[isladogs]

@Mindflux
Please can you provide a link to where MS have confirmed the bug

 

[Mindflux]

@Mindflux
Please can you provide a link to where MS have confirmed the bug

Colin,
It was in an email discussion with someone on the Access team. There's no link to provide at this time.

 

[GPGeorge]

Colin,
It was in an email discussion with someone on the Access team. There's no link to provide at this time

Via an email group? Or directly with a member of the team? Thanks.

 

[Mindflux]

Via an email group? Or directly with a member of the team? Thanks.

Hey GPG. The initial email was to a group of access developers containing basically what my post here contained. Then I reached out to someone on the MS Access team privately to ensure they saw the issue. We bounced a few emails back and forth and I sent them an example database to reproduce the problem and got acknowledgement of the bug and a "will be fixed soon" type response.

 

[isladogs]

Interesting as there's been no mention of it in the Access MVPs group so far.
I'll raise it as an issue (unless George has already done so)
Please can you upload your sample db here for testing

 

[Mindflux]

Interesting as there's been no mention of it in the Access MVPs group so far.
I'll raise it as an issue (unless George has already done so)
Please can you upload your sample db here for testing

Nothing in the DB but "report1" with a bunch of controls with borders. Print preview or print to a printer and your borders vanish.

As far as the Access MVP group, I'm not a part of any of those (but would love to be). This was another access development mailing list that I'm part of.

 

[GPGeorge]

Nothing in the DB but "report1" with a bunch of controls with borders. Print preview or print to a printer and your borders vanish.

As far as the Access MVP group, I'm not a part of any of those (but would love to be). This was another access development mailing list that I'm part of.

Thank you. The more channels through which information is reliably communicated to the people responsible for MS Access, the better. On the flip side, we live in a time when verification is quite important. No offense intended.

 

[GPGeorge]

Interesting as there's been no mention of it in the Access MVPs group so far.
I'll raise it as an issue (unless George has already done so)
Please can you upload your sample db here for testing

Nope, you were the first and apparently Gustav has done so via other channels.

 

[Mindflux]

Nope, you were the first and apparently Gustav has done so via other channels.

Gustav Brock? he's part of the mailing list I'm on so maybe he relayed it.

 

[Mindflux]

Thank you. The more channels through which information is reliably communicated to the people responsible for MS Access, the better. On the flip side, we live in a time when verification is quite important. No offense intended.

Indeed. I'm just glad it was confirmed quickly and hopefully an update pushed out relatively quickly too.

 

[isladogs]

Thanks for the example app which illustrated the issue perfectly.
Gustav has already found a reference to another v2206 bug

Access with breaking changes on Version 2206 (Recordset2.Fields returns DAO.Field3 instead of DAO.Field2) - Error 13

It looks like Microsoft introduced a breaking change with version 2206! :-( If you had code like Dim rs as DAO.Recordset2 Dim fld as DAO.Field2 For Each fld in rs.Fields '<- Code will break ...

stackoverflow.com

Just another fairly typical month for 365 version updates!

 

[Mindflux]

Yikes.

 

[isladogs]

For info this bug has now been fixed using the feature rollback method. No need to get a version update

 

[Mindflux]

Thanks Colin,
Can confirm borders are back.

 

[isladogs]

This feature rollback works very well for all these 'minor bugs'. Irritating to the person affected but not really a major issue for most users.
The only concern is you've no way of knowing the fix has been applied until someone tells you!

I suspect the other v2206 bug with recordset Field3 is potentially much more serious in terms of its impact

I wonder whether MS will ever manage to fix the inconsistent state 'monster bug' which is now over 4 years old.
Last year, I also reported a bug that goes back to 2007. Its fairly obscure & I suspect unlikely to ever get fixed

A Complex Deep Hidden Attachment Mystery

This is the fifth in a series of security challenges. In this case, a problem occurs when deep hiding attachment fields and a solution is provided. But why does the solution work?

www.isladogs.co.uk

However, I have found a use for the workround that I discovered. Its used as part of the following recent article that I'm still continuing to update:

Recover Deleted Database Objects

This is a detailed guide to the different methods of recovering different types of database objects, together with the advantages and disadvantages of each method

www.isladogs.co.uk

 

[Mindflux]

This feature rollback works very well for all these 'minor bugs'. Irritating to the person affected but not really a major issue for most users.
The only concern is you've no way of knowing the fix has been applied until someone tells you!

Sure. The rollback / feature gates are cool. But wrapping every new change in a some sort of conditional probably sucks unless there's some automation behind it. It also makes one wonder what exactly they were adding/removing/changing to break control borders in reports that also required being wrapped in a feature gate in case it's too buggy for use.

 

[isladogs]

I suspect that whatever caused the bug that you reported was a change that would appear to be totally unrelated to report object borders.

The fact that we are now getting new bugs reported every month suggests the code base used by Access is now so complex after 30 years of development that almost any change made triggers something totally unintended and unrelated to happen as well.

MS haven't divulged how this new 'feature gate' method is operated. On the one hand we can be pleased that many recent bugs have been solved within a couple of days or so. However, it may also increase the likelihood that monthly bugs will become the norm as it is relatively easy to roll back many of them. Unfortunately, that's not the case for the 2 older bugs I mentioned in post #17

 

[Mindflux]

The re-release of v2206 (15330.20230) on July 6th, 2022 seems to have remedied this.