We’re back at the Phoenix!
The feedback for the Phoenix, where we had our autumn 2025 conference, was very positive (the best we’ve had for any venue in recent times) – and so we’re going back there again! As you’ll remember if you were able to join us last year, we get a large private space, great food, our own private bar, and a location that’s just a 1 minute walk from Oxford Circus – so a simple no-change tube ride from Waterloo, Kings Cross, Euston, Paddington, Charing Cross, Liverpool Street Marylebone, Victoria and St Pancras!The agenda
The day will begin with tea and coffee being served from 08:45, with the conference introduction and welcome kicking things off at 09:20Time
Presenter
Details
09:30 – 10:20
Colin Riddington
Sprinkle a little UI Magic on your Apps
Colin will demonstrate several ways of enhancing the appearance of your applications including:
Colin will demonstrate several ways of enhancing the appearance of your applications including:
- Supercharge Your Continuous Forms – Hide, restore, freeze, move & resize columns. Add multiselect filter. Paint Me Transparent.
- Move and resize borderless forms – No need for a title bar
- Personalise your popup forms – Use an API to style the corner type, border and title bar colours together with an optional translucent title bar in Windows 11.
- Create theme-aware Access forms – Use code to detect the Office theme & automatically update the appearance of forms and their controls accordingly. Example themes provided. Fully customisable.
- Use the Expression Service to create new style Fluent UI message boxes – The MsgBoxT function can replace the VBA MsgBox with 3 message styles and features including optional timeout, support for themes, Unicode and Ease of Access settings
- Dock Your Forms to the Access Window – This works with both standard and popup forms and when forms are zoomed
10:20 – 10:40
Tea / Coffee / Refreshments
10:40 – 11:30
Mike Wolfe
Version Control for Access Developers
Developing software without version control is like walking a high wire with no net. In this session, I will explain the many reasons WHY you should use version control and take you through exactly HOW to get started. Depending on time and audience experience, we will cover the following topics:
Developing software without version control is like walking a high wire with no net. In this session, I will explain the many reasons WHY you should use version control and take you through exactly HOW to get started. Depending on time and audience experience, we will cover the following topics:
- Installing the free MS Access VCS Addin to convert Access apps to individual text files
- Installing the free GitHub Desktop app
- Committing an existing Access app to version control
- Building an Access app from source text files
- Pushing your changes to a free online GitHub repository
- Pulling changes down from GitHub
- Setting up GitHub workflows to protect your repository from accidental harm
- EASY MODE: using AI to manage Git (this is how I typically work)
- Pull requests and code reviews in GitHub
- Using squash merge with pull requests to keep a clean main with detailed commit history
11:40 – 12:30
Karl Donaubauer
Details of Karl’s session coming very soon…
12:30 – 13:20
Lunch
13:20 – 14:10
Alessandro Grimaldi
MS Access: More than you think!
Tired of the usual combo boxes, text boxes and labels? Access can do more! With some ingenuity and proper VBA you can bring some life to your Access forms creating graphical, coloured, interactive interfaces to enhance your applications and make your users’ life easier and funnier: drag and drop objects around, connect them with lines, and more. In this presentation I will show you some of the many interfaces I created in the last 20 years. I already showed them in several meetings in the past, but this time (for the first time!) I will let you take a look “behind the scenes”: how these interfaces can be built, the challenges I had to face, the tools I used.
Tired of the usual combo boxes, text boxes and labels? Access can do more! With some ingenuity and proper VBA you can bring some life to your Access forms creating graphical, coloured, interactive interfaces to enhance your applications and make your users’ life easier and funnier: drag and drop objects around, connect them with lines, and more. In this presentation I will show you some of the many interfaces I created in the last 20 years. I already showed them in several meetings in the past, but this time (for the first time!) I will let you take a look “behind the scenes”: how these interfaces can be built, the challenges I had to face, the tools I used.
14:10 – 14:25
Tea / Coffee
14:25 – 15:15
Tim Finch
3D Rendering in VBA. Helped by new “mate”, Claude
In this session Tim will talk you through a 2026 project to render a retail client’s configurable and customisable outdoor buildings, in 3d on screen and on paper, as part of their existing customer POS order taking MS Access & SQL Server system. Historically the company used to draw the plan view outline of a customer’s order in pencil on quote paperwork. Subsequently this was replaced by a set of JPG templates they manually edit at POS in MS Paint, to represent the customisation choices customers make. The latest project, a work in progress, is to allow customised design decisions to automatically render 3d ‘illustrative’ examples of the building the customer is ordering in real time – taking into account the colour, size, window and door positions and roofing type chosen – so the customer can walk away with a printout of them, with alongside quote paperwork.
In this session Tim will talk you through a 2026 project to render a retail client’s configurable and customisable outdoor buildings, in 3d on screen and on paper, as part of their existing customer POS order taking MS Access & SQL Server system. Historically the company used to draw the plan view outline of a customer’s order in pencil on quote paperwork. Subsequently this was replaced by a set of JPG templates they manually edit at POS in MS Paint, to represent the customisation choices customers make. The latest project, a work in progress, is to allow customised design decisions to automatically render 3d ‘illustrative’ examples of the building the customer is ordering in real time – taking into account the colour, size, window and door positions and roofing type chosen – so the customer can walk away with a printout of them, with alongside quote paperwork.
15:15 – 15:50
Steve Girling
Case Study of an Access Application for Blackmore UK based on Access FE & SQL Server BE
In Access, there are typically multiple ways to achieve the same result. Steve will demonstrate key aspects of a real-world application—the Blackmores business management system. He will showcase his preferred method for manipulating pass-through queries to return filtered data via stored procedures into a slick dashboard system.
In Access, there are typically multiple ways to achieve the same result. Steve will demonstrate key aspects of a real-world application—the Blackmores business management system. He will showcase his preferred method for manipulating pass-through queries to return filtered data via stored procedures into a slick dashboard system.
16:00 – 16:50
The Microsoft Access Team
Speakers and Sessions
Colin Riddington
Colin Riddington has been an Access developer for over 25 years with many years working in education. Access MVP since 2022. President of the Access Europe user group. Member of the Access Forever team. Active on many forums with the username: Isladogs. Colin’s Isladogs on Access website includes many Access articles, example apps, sample code and security challenges, together with commercial applications for businesses, schools and developers. He also has his own YouTube channel.
Mike Wolfe
Based in the USA, Mike Wolfe is one of the leading Access experts in the world, including the following:- He is one of the World Top 20 contributors for the Microsoft Access tag on Stack Overflow
- He runs https://nolongerset.com – the internet’s top source for all things Access and VBA
- Mike is one of only 20 Access MVPs worldwide: https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/PublicProfile/5004608?fullName=Mike%20Wolfe
- And for his day job Mike is President (and Developer!) at Grandjean & Braverman, Inc., a custom software development company in Pennsylvania, specialising in Microsoft Access with SQL Server development https://grandjean.net/
Alessandro Grimaldi
Alessandro Grimali has been a programmer since 1983, developing in VBA since 1998, Alessandro has been experimenting on graphical interfaces with Access since 2006. In his career he has been working around the world (Italy, Afghanistan, North Korea, Ethiopia, Austria, Germany, Belgium) as a consultant for several entities and institutions (e.g. United Nations, CTBTO, European Central Bank, BNP Paribas) creating dozens of Office applications, from simple automation tools to corporate-level, multiuser, Oracle-based systems. Since 2014 he lives in Frankfurt. In 2025 he was appointed MS Access MVP.
Tim Finch
Tim started in MS Access in 1995 when a local motorcycle bike leather suits manufacturer wanted to computerise their complex paper-based highly customised suit ordering process. They still use the hybrid MS Access/VB/Excel based system for capturing sales in 2026. He studied Computer Science at City University as a mature student in the late 90s, and has worked as an IT Consultant in varying roles, with database design for multiple clients as a prominent part to the portfolio, ever since. Tim is married to Barbara, has 2 older teenage daughters, and lives in Somerset UK. When he is not working, you’ll often find him playing ‘keytar bass’ in his local church band.
Steve Girling
Steve is based in North Wiltshire by the M4 corridor and has been developing Access applications since the mid-nineties. He has moved from pure Access FE & BE solutions to concentrating heavily on SQL Server backends from the mid-2000’s both in house and with SQL Azure. Steve specialises in slick, non-access looking user interfaces and takes a keen interest in SQL Server query and index tuning. Steve is the Head of IT & Governance for Blackmore UK who are one of the country’s leading data destruction and secure IT disposal companies. More information on Blackmore can be found at his company’s website – www.blackmoreuk.com.Sponsors
We’re indebted to our very generous sponsors, without whom these conferences would not be possible. For this conference, our sponsors are:
J Street Technology is a database application development shop offering requirements assessment, web and Access application development and support, Business Intelligence dashboards, and system integration services to customers across North America.