Access News - VIDEO from Karl Donaubauer's AEK Conference (Oct 2023)

[isladogs]

Members of the Microsoft Access Development Team gave a presentation at the 25th session of the annual AEK conference organised by Karl Donaubauer.
The session included the team's priorities for the next 6 months:

1. Continued focus on bug fixes
2. Large address aware (LAA)
3. Dataverse export performance improvements
4. Large monitor support for forms
5. Modern Chart Improvements
6. SQL Editor Improvements

In addition, issues related to New Outlook are being actively reviewed

You can see edited highlights from their presentation in Karl's latest Access News video released today

Access Forever!

 

[cheekybuddha]

The session included the team's priorities for the next 6 months:

I haven't watched the video yet but, reading this list, am I the only one who:

1. finds the list not all that compelling

2. has a sense of déjà vu, that I've read the same list as the list of priorities over the last several years

?

 

[GPGeorge]

The time frames are not as vague as in previous discussions. For example, LAA is already in the Insider channel where it can be evaluated today by anyone in that Channel.

 

[isladogs]

LAA will hit the Current channel at the end of Nov
..and Open Queries direct in SQL view is in the Beta Channel now and will be in the Current channel the following month.

@cheekybuddha
As I believe you use A2003/7, none of those will affect you in the slightest.
Both of the two items i listed above are already very useful to me.

But what would you find compelling? Perhaps compelling enough to upgrade.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

@isladogs

Nothing compelling really. A97 was already a well featured mature product. I was forced to A2003, and I'm drifting towards the current version and .accdb files gradually. Even so I would import an A2003 switchboard every time. (my modified version anyway)

I would use rtf text boxes, or however they are termed.

I may be missing some other important features, but I find I can do what I need in A2003.

What would you say we luddites are missing? Q

 

[isladogs]

I agree that both 97 and 2003 were excellent versions as was 2010.

I'm not suggesting that you are missing anything vital.
My question is what would you or the other David consider a compelling reason to upgrade?

 

[gemma-the-husky]

I have A365 anyway, but I tend to develop on A2003. I think the main stimulus to move to current access would be to provide the rtf text boxes, which I am sure would go down well.

 

[isladogs]

You mean this? Rich text has been available since at least version 2007

 

[gemma-the-husky]

Yes, I know, but in A2003, the tags get reproduced as plain text. They don't break A2003 though.

 

[isladogs]

I'm sure you don't really expect that MS would alter A2003 to retrofit new features.
Stephan Lebans did a great job in making rick text possible in older MDB versions
Thankfully all of that is no longer needed as its now built in.

Rich text support was added in A2007 but I just converted the above database to A2003 format & to my surprise it still worked!
I can still edit the rich text & can the rich text toolbar still pops up . . . when opened in A365!
Of course, it doesn't work in A2003 itself because the PlainText function didn't exist at that time

I'm not sure whether that gives you more (or less) reasons to upgrade.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

I just tried the A2003 example, but it says its missing a function plaintext.
Do you have that function. I imagine it just strips out the formatting tags.

No I didn't expect it to work retrospectively, but I had noted that the tags which work in A2007+ just show as text when viewed in A2003, which I mentioned in #9

I assume MS built in stuff like this where it thought it would add to the product. Maybe they even paid something for it!

 

[isladogs]

As already mentioned in post #10 , the PlainText function was added in later versions and its purpose is indeed to strip out all the rich text tags.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

Oh, I see. As you said uploaded it as A2K3 I assumed it would run in A2003.
I don't suppose it came with code for the plaintext function?

 

[isladogs]

The function is built into later versions of Access. It’s not a UDF

 

[gemma-the-husky]

I've started a new thread, Colin, as I'm taking this way off point.

 

[Lightwave]

One thing which is nice is that access 2003 is lightning fast even on old machines.

I still use Access 2003 to time athletic races. I bought a couple of cheap second hand laptops from Stone refurb installed Access 2003 and its off to the races. I timed Tentsmuir 2023 at the weekend - 550 runners - I did hook it up to RFID chips feed for a while but the RFID chips were quite a hassle to clean / hand out / sort and collect so we just manually input the numbers as they come across the line and the same simple access front end formats the results for us..

Its an old application I wrote about a decade ago and I really don't want to re-write it in something else.