Expanded Form/Report Sizes + Cascading Combo/List Boxes

With version 2609, published in the Current Channel on Sep 22, 2026, Microsoft releases two previously announced improvements for Access: the removal of the decades-old limits on form and report sizes, and cascading combo and list boxes. The two features are being rolled out gradually, so it may take some days or even a few weeks for them to become available on your system.

Form and Report Sizes

For ages, the width and height of forms and reports were limited to 22 inches (55,87 cm). This limitation has now been removed and, in practice, expanded to infinity.

With this modernization, Access applications can finally take full advantage of high-resolution and ultra-wide monitors, as well as all kinds of multi-monitor scenarios. Reports can be of any height and width, which was sometimes a problem in the past, e.g. when working with predefined print templates. The Access team's blog post also mentions potential accessibility benefits like bigger text and less cluttering because controls and the spacing between them can now be as large as desired.

New Limits

The new maximum form and report widths and heights of approximately 93195 inches (236716 cm) or 1.47 miles (2,36 km) will only be reached in exceptional cases. ;-) As before, sections are limited only in that the sum of their heights cannot exceed this total object height.

The new dimensions are available only in Access 365. As for backward compatibility, applications can still be opened in other versions of Access. However, if you try to open a form or report with these new sizes in an older version, you'll get the message that this object needs a newer version of Access.

Programming

If you want to use VBA to set (or get) a size value greater than 32767 (twips), e.g. the width of a form, you can not do so with the usual Forms!MyForm.Width = 50000 but only with

Forms!MyForm.Properties("Width") = 50000

The reason for this is that the old properties (Width, Height, Top, Left) are still limited to integer values. When you set them via the user interface, new properties are used in the background and are displayed under the old names. The same thing happens with the .Properties() syntax in VBA.

Cascading Combo and List Boxes

The combination of main and subforms has always been used to represent relationships/dependencies. Typical examples are cities located in specific countries and streets located in specific cities. This is now also possible with combo boxes and list boxes:

The second combo only shows streets in the chosen city

The dependency on the parent combo box works exactly the same way as it does in subforms, using the Link Child Fields and Link Master Fields properties, which were newly introduced for combo and list boxes. The Link Master Fields property can be a field name or a control name and for unbound controls, only the latter.

Programming

Same as with the expanded size limits, in VBA you must refer to the new properties using the Properties collection:

Me!cboStreet.Properties("LinkChildFields") = "CityId"
Me!cboStreet.Properties("LinkMasterFields") = "cboCity"

What's in it for us?

A) Until now, this had to be handled through programming, specifically, updating the dependent combo or list box when the parent value was changed. For many users who don't use VBA, this was a hurdle when creating them. Now it's possible to do this through the Access user interface.

B) For all users, including developers, a major advantage of this new feature is that it works in continuous forms. This means that dependent combo boxes in other records no longer appear empty if their value does not correspond to the parent combo box in the current record. Until now, this had to be "covered up" with tedious workarounds. From now on, Access handles this automatically and without any delay.

C) The workarounds for the "disappear" problem mentioned in advantage B) were only possible in form view, not in datasheet view. As a result, dependent combo boxes in datasheet view could only be used with an awkward limitation. That is finally a thing of the past:

London and Paris still showing their streets in datasheet view

So this new feature for combo and list boxes not only makes things easier for the average user, but also offers significant benefits for developers. It is, again, only available in Access 365 and, of course, in future versions of Access.

Further reading:

Just a few hours after we posted this, ;-) the Microsoft Access team published a blog post on the cascading combo and list boxes.