New Edge Browser Control in Microsoft Access

We’re excited to announce the release of the new Edge Browser Control in Microsoft Access! This control allows you to seamlessly integrate modern web content into your Access forms and reports.

How to use the Edge Browser control

You can find the new control in design view in the control gallery on the Form Design tab in the Controls section:

1. In form view, select the control, specify a URL, and select OK.
   
   

1. Switch to form view and you’re up and running!
   
   

New capabilities and important changes

Unlike the old browser control, you can use the new Edge browser control in continuous forms, reports, and renders for printing. To access Edge’s powerful DevTools, right-click, and choose Inspect.

Navigate to local files

If you want to navigate to a local file instead of a web page, you must use the https://msaccess prefix before the file path in the address. For example: https://msaccess/C:\Users\user\Documents\test.html

Trusted Domains property

By default, navigation via links, and automatic redirects away from the page the browser currently shows, are blocked. To allow these navigations, specify a table name or query name in the Trusted Domains property in the Property Sheet. In this case, the table or query's first output column must contain the URLs that you want to allow the browser to link to and automatically redirect to. This is especially helpful for pages that automatically redirect to a login page that doesn't exist on the same domain.

No Object property

Previously, when writing VBA for the old browser, you'd reference the Object property of the control, which allowed you to use the MSHTML VBA API built into the underlying browser engine. This was useful for performing tasks such as HTML DOM manipulation. Unfortunately, the browser engine used in the new control, WebView2, doesn’thave a built in VBA API, so we added some VBA functions directly to the control within Access. These include:

• ExecuteJavascript
  
• RetrieveJavascriptValue
  
• Navigate
  
• Refresh
  

Availability

Edge Browser Control in Microsoft Access is enabled now in Current Channel.

It will be enabled in Monthly Enterprise Channel in version 2307, which will be released on Sept 12, 2023.

It will be enabled in Semi-Annual Channel (Preview) when it moves to Version 2308, also on Sept 12.

It will be enabled in Semi-Annual Channel when it moves to Version 2308, on Jan 9, 2024.

For more information, see EdgeBrowserControl methods. You can find additional info in the Use the Edge browser control on a form article on support.microsoft.com.

We hope this new control will unlock many powerful scenarios and look forward to any feedback on the Access Feedback Forum.

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