Is Microsoft Access Being Discontinued? What It Means for Your Business

Short answer: no. But if your business now depends on an Access database, the more useful question is whether Access is still the right home for it.

Is Microsoft Access being discontinued?

No. Microsoft Access is still part of Microsoft 365 and remains supported — your database is not going to stop working. The real question for a growing business is whether Access is still the right home for a process you now depend on.

So why do businesses move off Access?

Access was built for one person on one PC, and businesses outgrow that. The common breaking points:

• Multi-user lockups — conflicting copies and record-is-locked errors when more than one person needs in.
• No access from outside the office — it is tied to a PC or a shared drive.
• Corruption and size limits as the data grows.
• Key-person risk — only Bob knows how it works.

What is the alternative?

A custom web app that keeps your exact workflows and reports but runs on a real database: multi-user, automatically backed up, secure, and reachable from any browser.

Do I have to switch now?

No. If your database is stable, low-risk, and used by one or two people, there is no rush. Send us your file for a free review, or get an instant ballpark with our estimator — no call required.

Where the rumour comes from

The belief that Access is being killed off is not invented out of nothing. Several things around it genuinely were discontinued, and each one produced a wave of headlines:

• Access Web Apps and Access Web Databases — the SharePoint-hosted browser version — were shut down in 2018 and never replaced. This is the big one, and it is why there is still no official route to putting an Access database in a browser.
• Access for Mac was discontinued long ago. There is no current Mac version and no sign of one, which for Mac-based businesses amounts to the same thing as discontinuation.
• Older perpetual versions reach end of support on their own schedules, the way every Office release does. That is a version going out of support, not the product ending.
• Microsoft's own attention has moved to Power Apps and Dataverse for new low-code work, and it recommends them for new projects. Being no longer the recommended starting point is not the same as being removed.

So the accurate position: Access ships with Microsoft 365 today, existing databases keep working, and no end date has been announced. But it is a mature product, not one being invested in, and everything Microsoft has added around it since 2018 has pointed somewhere else.

What would actually happen if it were discontinued

Worth thinking through, because the honest answer is less frightening than the rumour and more useful for planning.

Your file would not stop opening. Access desktop databases run locally, so an installed copy keeps working for as long as the operating system runs it. What you would lose is new versions, security patches, and eventually compatibility with a future version of Windows — a slow squeeze over years, not a switch-off.

The practical risk is not the product being withdrawn. It is much more ordinary: the file grows past what the format can handle, more people need it at once than it can serve, someone needs it from home, or the person who built it leaves. Those arrive on their own schedule regardless of what Microsoft does, and they are what actually forces the decision.

How to tell whether you should move

Rather than watching for an announcement, watch your own database. Any of these means the question is now live:

• The file is approaching 2GB, or you are compacting it regularly to keep it usable.
• More than about ten people need it at the same time, or you are already seeing lock conflicts.
• Someone needs it from home, from a phone, or from another site.
• It has corrupted more than once.
• One person understands the code and there is no documentation.
• You are copying data out of it into Excel to produce the reports you actually rely on.

None of these are urgent on the day they appear. All of them get more expensive to fix the longer they are left, because the workarounds people invent in the meantime become part of the process.

If you recognise two or three of them, a free review of your file will tell you what moving would involve and what it would cost, and you can decide with a number in front of you instead of a rumour.