Microsoft's Access Team informed us on Jan 28 that the bug has been fixed in the Current Channel for versions 2212 and 2301. You only need to close Access and reopen it for the fix to take effect. The fix is also included in Version 2212 for Monthly Enterprise Channel starting with February 14th.
Reports continue to appear of a potential bug impacting Access with SQL Server Back Ends following the December 6, 2022 Office Update.
The symptom reported is a severe spike in memory usage resulting in Out of Memory problems, especially when running large or complex queries.
The application is an Access Front End with a SQL Server backend. Reporting parties indicate that the problem impacts multiple users at multiple locations; one party has tested both accdB and accdEs.
The build number in the first report is MS 365 Version 2211, Build 16.0 .15831.20098 32-bit and the build number in the second report is MS 365 Version 2211, Build 16.0.15831.20208 32-bit . Rolling back to version 2210 temporarily resolved the problem, but with version 2211 now rolling out in the current channel, the issue has returned for them
Caution: It's early days, and Microsoft hasn't yet confirmed this as a bug. Nor is it clear whether it's an Access issue, a Windows issue, or even a SQL Server issue. I personally have the first version reporting the problem, Build 16.0 .15831.20098 32-bit, but my own continued testing has not repeated the single initial instance in which I saw Memory climb in Task Manager for one query and had to kill Access to recover.
In the meantime, you can visit this thread on MS Answers and contribute to the discussion if you are having the same problems.
Additional posters continue to report similar problem in the MS Answers thread.
In short, the public reports in the user forums have to be taken seriously, but in the absence of more verification than I can provide, it's hard to make the case that this is a bug, at least not with Access. ----
We would be grateful if anyone can provide Microsoft with a reproduction scenario which they can use to investigate the problem further. Because it is Access/SQL Server, that might be difficult, of course, but it would go a long way towards resolving this one. Thanks.
To make sure that all people who have subscribed to this article are actively informed by email, I'm writing a new comment: The bug has now been fixed by Microsoft. You can find more information in the breaking news message at the beginning of the article.
I just ran a large query against a SQL Azure back end. Using a Cartesian query to generate a little over 8.5 million records, I did see a noticeable increase in memory usage in Task Manager, but not strikingly different from previous experience with other large queries. However, memory usage reported in Task Manager didn't drop when I closed the query. It only returned to base level when I closed the accdb too.