Andrew Richards
UK database developer and IT trainer. Owner of theitservice.co.uk and some cats
📋 Biography
I have been an IT trainer, specialising in Access, database design and Excel since 2000, and started and have run The IT Service in the UK since 2009. I've built databases for the likes of Imperial College London, the University of Oxford, Marks and Spencer, the Royal Marsden Hospital and various other companies and government bodies. I've also provided training in all things data, including Access, Excel, SQL and other data-adjacent topics such as GDPR, cyber-security and the sensible use of AI to organisations across the UK. I try to specialise in bringing dry topics to life in an interesting way - and sometimes, I succeed. I'm a co-chair of the UK Access User Group, in which capacity I help to organise two in-person conferences each year, as well as online events for our members. When doing none of the above, I live in rural Sussex in South-East England with my partner Angela, and various cats, chickens, sheep and guinea fowl.
✨ High-Impact Contributions 5
I was a co-organiser and presenter at the 30th Anniversary Conference of the UK Access User Group, held in May 2025 at Imperial College London. At this conference, I presented a session on making use of SQL Schemas within an Access front end. I demonstrated how to create schemas, how to set a default schema for users, how to assign permissions to schemas and how to tell what permissions a user has on each schema. This was then translated into determining which objects to show users within an Access application, and how to use SQL permissions within Access to present a coherent UI. SQL schemas are not properly surfaced within Access (the schema name is prepended to the object name, but no other properties are maintained) so this is an area often less understood by developers.
Access DevCon is an annual virtual conference, with 140 developers from Europe and further afield 109 of whom attended our session. I presented, with my colleague Peter Bryant, our Graph Authenticator tool for the first time to a European and online audience. Comments received for the session we presented included: - "One of the best presentations of the two-day event" - "a problem that, once again, brilliant community members have solved - and superbly presented. Clear concise and to the point" - "Great slick presentation. one of the highlights of the show" - "The highlight of the first day, well presented, engaging content, and useful." - "Novel solution to a problem more and more people are going to encounter in Access development. "
I ran a small group meeting for people who had expressed an interest in creating an MCP server to connect Claude to Access.
Access Day is an international conference held at the Microsoft Campus in Seattle, with attendees from across the world. Alongside three MVP presenters and the Microsoft Access team, I launched (with my colleague Peter Bryant) the solution which we've created to bring Microsoft Authentication to VBA, allowing the connection of Microsoft Access (and Excel) to the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. We developed a C# wrapper for the MSAL library, exposing authentication to COM clients. For the first time, this allows Access to reliably fix the "new Outlook" problem (VBA is not supported in New Outlook, so breaks COM automation), and talk to Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Intune, Bookings and much more. Almost all of the Microsoft Access team were present for this presentation, along with around 30 other developers.
I presented on "Connecting to the Graph API from Access" at the October conference of the UK Access User Group, along with Peter Bryant. This event had people attending from across the UK, and speakers from the UK, Jersey and the USA. This subject has a big impact on all Access developers who send emails via Outlook, as the New Outlook application does not support COM automation, and many processes involving sending emails and creating calendar events are failing for that reason. This presentation led to more development on the topic, and to further presentations at Access Day in Seattle this March and DevCon Vienna this April.