Make project portable???

L

Lauri

I have finally finished my application and I want to
export it onto a network drive so that my user can begin
using it. Can I just copy/paste the .mdb file??
 
N

Norman Yuan

Theroretically, at least, you can just copy the *.mdb file to network drive
and create shortcut on users' desktop, so that user can simply double-click
it to run your Access app. But it is not good way to do that if there is
more than one user (that is the reason you want to put it on a netwrok
drive, right?). It may be OK if there is only very few users, say, 3 - 5. It
is also depends on how the database is used.

However, if you want to avoid trouble later, you'd better split the your
Access application into two: backend, containing data tables, which is
sitting in a network drive; frontend, containing forms, reports and all your
code, which is sitting on each user's computer (individual copy on each
computer, not a shortcut pointing to the same frontend file), and ideally,
the frontend is compiled to *.mde file. The frontend links to data in the
backend.
 
T

Tony Toews

Lauri said:
I have finally finished my application and I want to
export it onto a network drive so that my user can begin
using it. Can I just copy/paste the .mdb file??
Click to expand...

1) To add to Norman's posting do these other users have Access
installed on their systems? Or Office Professional which contains
Access? If not you'll need to purchase the MOD.

Microsoft Access (Office) Developer Edition FAQ
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/developereditionfaq.htm

2) You want to split the MDB into a front end containing the queries,
forms, reports, macros and modules with just the tables and
relationships. The FE is copied to each network users computer. The
FE MDB is linked to the tables in the back end MDB which resides on a
server. You make updates to the FE MDB and distribute them to the
users, likely as an MDE.

See the "Splitting your app into a front end and back end Tips" page
at http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/splitapp/ for more info. See the
Auto FE Updater downloads page
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/autofe.htm to make this relatively
painless.. It also supports Terminal Server/Citrix quite nicely.

3) Make sure that if you distribute an MDE to your users you always
keep the MDE around.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
 
Top