Your Access database is at breaking point: the seven signs
Microsoft Access is a supported product, and a well-built Access database can run a small team for years. It fails by degrees, not by crashing: the file creeps towards the hard 2 GB limit, corruption and locking grow with the user count, and the one person who understands the VBA becomes the system. Here are the seven measurable signs an Access database has outgrown itself, and what each one means for how long you have.
Access databases do not crash through a wall. They lean on it, for years, while everyone in the office quietly adjusts: save more often, do not run that report while invoicing is running, never open it over the VPN. The adjustments are the symptom. Here is how to read them.
Each sign below is checkable this afternoon. Sources for every date and limit are on the Access database replacement page.
The seven signs
1. The file is past 1 GB and growing. The hard limit is 2 GB per database file, minus what Access itself needs, and nothing raises it. Right-click the .accdb, check the size, plot it against last year’s. The trend line tells you your deadline more honestly than any consultant.
2. Compact and repair has become a ritual. Once a month is housekeeping. Nightly, with someone checking it ran, is a business process built around managed decay. The corruption it papers over gets likelier with every extra user on a shared file.
3. You count users before opening things. Access documents a 255-connection maximum, but shared network databases strain socially long before any technical ceiling: locking conflicts, the read-only-mode shuffle, the morning rota for who opens it first. If your team has etiquette for using the database, the database is the bottleneck.
4. The version under it is out of support. Access 2013 left support on 11 April 2023; Access 2016 and 2019 followed on 14 October 2025; Access 2021 retires on 13 October 2026, with no extended phase. Unpatched Office components are exactly what UK Cyber Essentials requires you to remove or isolate, and the assessor will ask.
5. One person dares touch the VBA. Macros and modules accreted over fifteen years are a codebase, whether or not anyone calls them one. IT Jobs Watch counted a single permanent UK advert citing MS Access in the six months to June 2026, against 139 two years earlier. If your VBA author retires, the market will not replace them.
6. Somebody asks for browser or phone access. There is no supported web route inside Access: Access web apps were shut down in April 2018, and Microsoft points web ambitions at Power Apps. The moment the business genuinely needs the system outside the office, a re-platform is happening; the only question is whether it is planned.
7. The workarounds have workarounds. The export-to-Excel-then-re-import dance. The second database that holds what the first one cannot. The field everyone knows means something other than its label. Each one was rational; the pile is the sign.
Scoring it
| Signs you ticked | What it means | Sensible next step |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 1 | Access is doing its job | Test a restore from backup; diarise a yearly check |
| 2 to 3 | Outgrowing, not yet failing | Split front and back end, or move tables to SQL Server; start the conversation |
| 4 to 5 | Structurally past its design | Plan the replacement this year, on your timetable |
| 6 to 7 | The wall is load-bearing | Get an audit now, before the file or the VBA author leaves first |
The honest part
Access is not the villain here, and we will not pretend it is dying; Microsoft 365 Access is supported and Access 2024 runs to October 2029. Plenty of two-person businesses should stay on it and just take backups seriously. The breaking point is about fit: 2 GB, 255 connections and a desktop-only model are generous limits for a side database and absurd ones for the system a company actually runs on.
If you ticked four or more, the free Legacy Risk Audit will tell you in 30 minutes whether a half-step stabilises you or whether the rebuild conversation has arrived, with a written one-pager you can put in front of whoever owns the budget. Every record kept either way; that part is not negotiable.