Zoom Phase 2

Implementing zoom functionality in Access is a complex undertaking. Therefore, the Microsoft Access team is releasing it in phases. We have reported on phase 1. Now, with version 2608, build 20326.20100, published in the Current Channel on August 18, 2026, the second phase has arrived for production use and introduces important enhancements. (It is being rolled out gradually, so it may take a few days before you see it.)

Continuous Forms, PopUps and Report View

Support for continuous forms is the biggest step in this phase, because they are one of the greatest strengths of Access and heavily used. The zooming options in continuous forms are the same as for single forms, described in our phase 1 article.

The situation is different for zooming in pop-up forms/reports, which are now also supported. The zoom slider and the ribbon item for zooming apply to child windows within the Access main window. Since pop-ups are not child windows of Access, these two zooming options have no effect on them, and you have to use either the keyboard, the mouse, or code to zoom on the fly.

Regarding reports, the Print Preview was the only view in Access that had zoom functionality for many years, which in phase 1 was just supplemented with keyboard and mouse support. Now, in Phase 2, the zooming features have also been integrated into the Report view.

Zoom Range Expansion and Programming Support

In phase 1, you could zoom in the range of 50–500%. This has now been expanded to 10–1000%, meeting what we had in Print Preview in the past.

Until now, zooming could only be programmed using a few old RunCommand constants. In phase 2, the new Zoom property enables much more flexibility. This line of code e.g. sets the zoom factor for a form to 200%:

Me.Properties("Zoom") = 200

New Option to Disable Zoom

This option is another important change in this phase. With complex new features, it's not unusual for some problems and bugs to arise, and not everyone wants the changes incorporated into their applications. After some discussion, the Access team added an option to completely disable the zoom feature for a database.

A side note, while we're on the subject of new options:

Apart from the zoom feature, this release includes another useful new option for adjusting the font size in the Property sheet.

What's Next regarding Zooming?

The plan is to add zooming to the other two views, to Layout view and, most importantly, to the Design views, which will make it easier to create and modify objects. The timeline for this has not yet been announced.

Closer to being available for production use, as they are already included in the latest beta versions, are additional customization options for the zoom function, such as an object-level property to enable or disable zooming (Allow Zooming) and to resize the form or report window according to the zoom factor (Zoom Resizes Window). Further improvements may follow.

If you want to stay up to date on every detail of the zoom features, you can follow Colin Riddington's series of articles.