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Access 2021 lost support on 13 October 2026

Every figure below is from Microsoft or a named reseller · checked 1 October 2026

Microsoft’s lifecycle notices put Access 2021 and Access LTSC 2021, and the whole Office 2021 family, out of support on 13 October 2026. There is no extension and no Extended Security Updates programme — Windows 10 had one, Office 2021 does not. Access 2016 and Access 2019 already went on 14 October 2025.

First, the part the headlines get wrong

Your database does not stop working. Microsoft’s own wording is that the apps “will continue to function, but you could be exposed to security risks”. On 14 October your .accdb opens exactly as it did the day before. Anyone telling you the lights go out is selling something.

What ends is security fixes, bug fixes and support. The honest version of the deadline is narrower: it is the date an unpatched Office component starts handling your business data, and the date most IT policies stop allowing it. If you are on Microsoft 365 rather than a one-time 2021 licence, none of this applies to you.

The part nobody writing about Word and Excel will tell you

Every “what to do about Office 2021” article points you at Office 2024 or Microsoft 365. For an Access owner that advice is incomplete in a way that costs money, because most of those editions do not contain Access at all:

And LTSC Professional Plus has no public price: Microsoft sells it through certified partners on a quote. What most of those articles also skip is that you do not need a suite at all. Microsoft sells Access 2024 on its own: one PC, a one-time purchase, $179.99 on the Microsoft Store (US price, checked 1 October 2026), supported until 9 October 2029. So the actual question is not “which Office do I buy”. It is how many PCs need to open this database, and whether paying for Access on each of them is still the best use of the money.

The three real options, including the one that is not us

Buy Access 2024, or LTSC Professional Plus 2024. Like for like, nothing to rebuild, and supported until 9 October 2029 — three more years than the deadline that brought you here. Standalone Access 2024 at $179.99 a PC is the simple route for one or two machines; LTSC Professional Plus 2024 is the route for an organisation that buys Office through a partner. If the Access application is genuinely doing work nothing else does, this is the sane choice and you should take it.

Move to Microsoft 365. At home, Microsoft 365 Personal or Family includes Access (PC only). For a business, Access comes with Business Standard and Business Premium, not Business Basic, which has no desktop apps (Microsoft’s plan comparison, checked 12 October 2026). The ceilings come with it: 2 GB, and the corruption that shows up when several people share a file. You have bought time, not a different situation.

Ask whether it still needs to be Access. Only worth it if the answer is more than “a renewal is due”. If the database is a handful of forms, a list and a couple of reports that several people need at once, the edition upgrade is paying to keep a constraint. What we do instead is on the Access page — including exactly what replaces VBA, and where that stops.

What we are not claiming

Access is not dying and this deadline does not make it dying. It still ships, Microsoft 365 keeps it current, and if it works for you it works. We are an early product from a very small company, and what happens to your data if we disappear is a fair question to ask before you move anything.

The two-minute version, with your own data

Nothing above tells you whether your records survive the trip, and that is the only question that matters. So do it with a table you already have, and stop as soon as you have seen enough:

  1. In Access: External Data → Export → Text File, name it .csv, choose Delimited and Comma, and tick Include Field Names on First Row.
  2. Drop it on the box at the top of our Access page. No account, no email, no download.
  3. It builds the collection in one step — each column typed only from what every value in it supports — and stops only to ask which way an ambiguous date reads.

It reads a currency column as money, keeps $0.00 as zero rather than blank, turns a column of repeating words into a dropdown, and settles day/month from the column as a whole. Where it cannot settle something it stops and asks rather than guessing, and a refusal leaves nothing behind: no half-loaded table to clean up.

What it will not do: convert forms, reports, macros or VBA. It moves records. If the value of your database is its code, a rebuild is the honest answer and this is not it.

Before you renew anything, look at what the alternative actually is: open the live demo database in one click — no account, no email. Or read what the tools you are comparing let you take back out, or what per-seat pricing does to a team tool.

If you would rather not rebuild it yourself: tell us what the old system does and we will build a working version and show you. No fee and no card — what we build fits the free plan, and we ask you to pay only once it is genuinely running your business.

End of support is a deadline, not a recommendation, so it is worth seeing the field before picking. The alternatives compared, with prices checked against each vendor.

If you are moving anyway, it is worth knowing what an AI can build from an Access database before you budget for a rewrite.