Windows 10 v1909 breaks Microsoft Access, fix coming in December

Microsoft rolled out Windows 10 v1909 a few days ago. This is a minor update that boosted some performance elements and fixed different issues in the OS.

As always, Microsoft’s engineers spent an entire summer and went the extra mile to test the feature update. In this manner, they made sure the Windows 10 November Update is not plagued by bugs. However, some major problems still went under the radar.

Windows 10 users already reported numerous issues that affected their machines. As a quick reminder, Microsoft rolled out the first Security Patch for Office on November 12. Unfortunately, the update didn’t go well and it broke Access UPDATE query with WHERE Clause.

However, Office users confirmed that they can still execute the queries without the WHERE clause. The query fails with the following error message:

Additionally, the query to update a value in the table still works fine on systems where November 2019 Update is not installed.

How to fix Microsoft Access error “Query is corrupt”

Many Windows 10 users managed to resolve the problem by uninstalling the problematic update. However, people are of the opinion that it is not a feasible solution for large organizations with thousands of machines. Microsoft has already issued an update that a fix is currently scheduled on December 10.

If you encounter this issue before the fix is available, the recommended workaround is to update the query so that it updates the results of another query, rather than updating a table directly.

Microsoft recommends its users that they should try the following workaround:

1. If you want to execute a query like: UPDATE Table1 SET Table1.Field1 = “x” WHERE ([Table1].[Field2]=1);
2. Create a new query named Query1 as follows: SELECT * from Table1;
3. Finally, replace all references to Table1 with Query1 in the following manner: UPDATE Query1 SET Query1.Field1 = “x” WHERE ([Query1].[Field2]=1);

Considering the large impact of the problem, affected users want Microsoft to release an update as soon as possible.

It seems like Microsoft is already working on a fix. Microsoft’s MVP Gustav Brock confirmed that the company plans to release an “out-of-band” non-security update very soon. Furthermore, the fix is coming for all affected builds.