Microsoft has confirmed it will end the Access Database Compare tool in June 2026, removing it from all supported versions of Office including Microsoft 365, Office 2024, Office 2021 plus Office 2019 . The deadline is June 20, 2026. If database comparison is part of your regular workflow for version control or auditing changes between Access files, you need to find a replacement before that date. What does this sudden change mean for the future of Access itself?
Microsoft has announced it is retiring the Access Database Compare tool (DATABASECOMPARE.EXE) in June 2026. If you use this tool to spot differences between two versions of an Access database, you need to find a replacement now.
This is a minor loss for most Access users, but if database comparison is part of your regular routine, you need to act before the June 20, 2026 or , 1 month, 29 days from today deadline.
What Is Being Removed and Why
Database Compare is a standalone tool that ships with Access and lets you compare two Access database files side by side. Microsoft announced in March that it will stop distributing and installing it with Office as of June 2026.
Microsoft’s reason for the stoppage is:
“because it depends on components that are no longer available and fails to launch reliably on many Office installs. Because we can no longer provide updated components, it will no longer install with new Office setups.”
In plain terms, the tool has been quietly broken for a lot of people for some time. Microsoft is making the retirement official rather than leaving a half-working tool in place.
The “Too Hard Basket”
Another point of view is that Microsoft has decided to save money by dropping a supported product rather than keep it going as the company promised.
Paying customers can be rightly annoyed that Microsoft decides to stop a program it made just because it’s now too hard and costly for the company to keep it running.
Who Is Affected
This applies to all supported versions of Office regardless of the official support end date.
- Microsoft 365 subscriptions
- Access 2024 including as part of Office 2024 bundles
- Access 2021 including as part of Office 2021 bundles
- Access 2019 volume licensed and Enterprise plans
If you’re running an older version of Office and have a working version of the tool, you can continue to use it until June 20, 2026. After that date, Microsoft says it will be removed and will not be available for download but it doesn’t say how that will be done.
June 20, 2026 or , 1 month, 29 days from today is the hard deadline. After that, the tool is gone.
Where to find it now: DatabaseCompare.exe is installed under the DCF folder of your Office installation, for example C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\DCF\DATABASECOMPARE.EXE, and it often comes alongside Microsoft Spreadsheet Compare as part of Office Professional Plus or Microsoft 365.
Removed not just ended
Microsoft says the Database Compare tool will be removed completely from customers computers.
“You will not be able to continue to use it on older versions. We are removing the tool completely.”
For Microsoft 365, Office 2024 and Office 2021 deletion of the tool will presumably happen during an automatic update. Possibly the removal code will be deployed in May or early June to be triggered on the June 20 cutoff date.
The company hasn’t said how deletion will be done on older versions of Office.
This is a different method from the end of Publisher later this year. For Publisher, the Microsoft 365 version of Publisher will stop working completely while the Office 2021/2019 etc versions will keeping running but without support.
What to Use Instead
Microsoft points to four third-party alternatives. These are:
- AccdbMerge a diff and merge tool that compares table definitions, data, forms, and modules, with a free version available for main database objects
- AccessDiff compares all objects in Access including forms, code modules, queries, and macros
- DataWeigher focuses on comparing and synchronizing data between two Access databases, with color-coded visual results and the ability to save output as a report or SQL script
- Total Access Detective compares any two objects within one Access database, including fields, controls, properties, macro lines, and module code
Of these, AccdbMerge is worth looking at first if budget matters since it has a free tier. Total Access Detective from FMS is a well-established name in the Access developer community and is worth considering if you do this kind of comparison regularly.
What You Should Do Now
- Check if you actually use the tool. Many Access users have never touched Database Compare, or tried it and found it wouldn’t launch. If that’s you, this change costs you nothing.
- If you do rely on it, test one of the alternatives before June 20, 2026. Don’t wait until the tool disappears to find out which replacement fits your workflow.
- Don’t try to save the EXE file and run it later. The supporting DLLs and configuration files in the DCF subfolder are also being removed, so the standalone EXE will not work on its own after the cutoff.
The future of Access?
The announcement about the end of Database Compare was missing an important point … the future of Access itself.
Microsoft Access has been an outlier in the Office apps for many years. It gets little attention and few new or changed features. That leaves customers wondering if Access might go the way of Publisher which is ending later this year.
Dropping Access would save Microsoft a lot of support and development costs. In recent years the company has been brutal in cost-cutting despite the effect on paying customers.
Excel could be presented as an alternative to Access … not a good alternative but enough for Microsoft PR machine to work with.
Microsoft should confirm their commitment to Access as a courtesy to their paying customers. Was that commitment missing by design or just overlooked?
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