It wouldn’t be a Microsoft update without a new Access bug! OMG.
The Bug
As reported:
Attachment Field crashes after Microsoft Office Update
Hello everyone! At my work, we recently has an update from Microsoft Office and now we can’t use attachment field at all. All the access database would crash whenever we try to attach or remove attachment. Does anyone has similar issue? If you do, have you find any solution or workaround for...
and now confirmed by fellow MVPs, build 15225.20288 breaks attachment fields causing Access to outright crash.
As always, the best practice is not to use attachment fields in the first place and that is yet again illustrated by this latest blunder out of Redmond, but that still doesn’t help those who do use them and are impacted by this latest bug.
The Fix
Update: 2022-06-16 - Fixed
Microsoft has informed us that they have resolved the issue. There is nothing for you to install, rollback, … Just close Access, then restart it and the issue should resolve itself.
Yes, that is correct, using flags, they can change your setup remotely without your intervention. It doesn’t change the build no or anything. So there is no way to distinguish setups.
A Workaround
For those of you impacted by the latest bug, your only option is to rollback your build to a prior ‘stable’ build (you could try build 15225.20204). You can get all the details of rolling back Office by reviewing:
Microsoft Office 365 - Uninstall an Update
With Microsoft’s major push of Office 365, more specifically Click-to-run (C2R or CTR), I think it important to briefly touch base on the entire update process. Do note that the following also applies to the C2R versions of Access 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021+ the only difference being the build numbers. While Office 365 will, unless…
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For anyone wondering, the issue has already been reported to Microsoft.
A Solution
If you want to learn about the proper way to handle attachments in an Access database, then review:
Adding Attachments to an Access Database
When Access 2007 came out Microsoft introduced a new Attachment data type to allow users to insert attachments within their databases. I urge you to NEVER use Attachment data types for a variety of reasons, but mainly: Leads to database bloating Can impact performance You need code to interact and extract the attachments from the…
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And the hits just keep on comin’…
Thanks for the heads-up
Couldn’t help myself!
Yet another reason to avoid attachments
Indeed!
I am having this problem on version 15330-20196 which was auto installed on ’07-06-2022