Forum Discussion
MS Access Database Decommissioning
George, thank you for your time and recommendations. Yes, it has heavily been used at the present time under the MS365 MS Access application. There are no major enhancements or features that could be out of ordinary. 😀
I'll check the 32 but to 64 bit though.
Thanks,
It's probably good to keep in mind that backwards compatibility is an important consideration for Microsoft products. You can even run mdb files created back in 2003/2004 under M365 Access.
Since you are now using this database with your current M365 installation, it's quite likely that you have either have 32 bit Access installed, or that nothing in the database uses 32 bit only features.
What matters in that regard, would be if your organization did switch to 64 bit Office in the future and you'd have to deal with any issues at that point. Making an accdb 64 bit compatible is not difficult, although it could be time consuming.
So we do not have to upgrade the database from 2016 to 2019?
No, the accdb format is the same. Newer versions can introduce new features. That doesn't impact features in accdbs created with older versions.
Deprecation of features can be a different story, but between 2016 and 2019, that was not a problem.However, now that you mention Access 2019, you've raised another issue. Access 2019 reaches End of Support in October. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/access-2019?branch=live
That means you should be moving to Access 2021 or 2024, not 2019. Or to the perpetual license version in M365.
If we want to run the latest version of MS Access 2024 application, do you need to get an upgrade just for MS Access Application?
Hi George, I opened our MS Access database that is in the format "The database itself is showing Access 2007-2016 file format - Access." as a part of our MS Access database 2505 comes with the MS Windows 365 without any issues but when I select the Save option, I was given only Default File Format for Blank database of Access 2007-2019.
Well version 2019 is supposed to be decommissioned October 4, 2025.
How can I make sure that our MS Access files are saved or converted in a format past 2019 so they won't get decommissioned?
Thanks for your time and my apologies for bothering you with these questions. We just want to make sure we are safe past October 4, 2019.
Kamran
Do not worry about it.
Access version 2019 is NOT going to be decommissioned. Access 2019 will go out of Support.
Those are two different things.
End of Support means that no updates will be pushed out for that version and Microsoft will no longer provide customer support.
Access 2019 itself will continue to function just as it has for the last 6 years. Nothing changes except you can't call Microsoft for help if you encounter problems and there will be no new updates for it. It's "frozen in time" as it were.
Also, as I tried to explain once before, the reference to the Access 2007-2019 file format is NOT relevant to this particular discussion about the life cycle for any given version of Access in any event.
File format refers to the fact that Microsoft changed the internal file format for Access databases from .mdb to .accdb in the 2007 version and has kept it essentially the same since. It's not worth going into the significant internal differences here.
Just understand that the file format of the accdb is not the same thing as the version of the Access executable file, MSAccesse.exe.
MS stopped updating that file format reference in 2019 because the file format itself -- the .accdb file format -- hasn't changed significantly internally. It's also now the same in M365 and will continue to be the same.
Here's the problem.
You are conflating the end of support for the Access application itself, i.e. the MSAccess.exe for Access 2019, with the file format of accdb files created in any version of Access.
To reiterate.End of Support means no further updates or bug fixes for the Access 2019 version of MSAccess.exe and no more customer support service for it.
Nothing more than that.
ALL installed instances of Access 2019 will continue to function as they have done.
As a matter of fact, people around the world are still running instances of Access 2003, 2007, 2010, etc., etc. even though none of them are supported any longer. All that means is "No new updates. No Bug fixes. No free customer support calls."
Your accdb files will continue to function as they do now and do so under M365 versions of Access.