One of the highlights of the First Day of Access DevCon 2023 was a one-hour presentation on the new Northwind Showcase Templates. Tom van Stiphout, who led the development team, and Kim Young, gave us a compelling look at both the new interface and the VBA that drives it.
The Northwind 2.0 Working Group invites you to download and try the new versions of Northwind.
The Starter version welcomes newer users who need to learn basic Access features in a realistic context, but without feeling overwhelmed by the rich features in a fully developed application.
The Developer version showcases advanced Access features in a solid, working application using sound design principles and professional practices. It incorporates normalized tables, proper naming conventions, and professionally written code to enforce complex business rules.
You can read more about the launch of Northwind 2.0 in a longer blog article on MS Tech. Also look for a future blog post on MS Tech relating the story of our Working Group's adventures in creating the templates as a team.
Where Do You Get the New Northwind 2.0 Showcases?
You now can find the templates inside Microsoft Access (Access 2019 or later), by going to File > New, as you do with other templates. If you don't see them as the first two templates, you can search on Northwind.
The process of propagating the downloads in Access is on-going. That means some users in some regions may not see it in Access right away. If that is the case, you can always get them from this Featured Access Template page.
It's your turn
Download and explore both templates. Adapt and expand the Developer version to fit your requirements.
Send us your feedback
Please give us your comments and critiques.
We are:
Tom van Stiphout, Software Dev Manager, at Kinetik IT and working group leader.
George Hepworth, President, Access Pacific User Group
Kim Young, Founder, Access All Stars in Chicago
George Young, Founder, Dawson Butte Software, and leader of the Denver Area Access User Group (DAAUG)
Dawn Taylor, IT consultant and member of the Denver Area Access User Group (DAAUG)
Wow, to open the order details, it was even used objects and collection, respect.
Awesome work by the Access community of developers. The upgrade was way over-due and the new versions hold a lot of great development standards and code.