Accessing Database over a network on without Access???

[sistemalan]

We are a charity working with a large number of children, and use access to store contact information for their families. Out of 5 PC's on the office Network Access 2003 is only installed on 2 of them. The rest have office 2003 Standard edition (Word, Excel, Powerpoint).

What I would like is for my colleagues using other machines to be able to find information from the database (i.e. a parent's phone number) from whatever machine they are working on.

The database file is in a folder which is shared over the network and although Access is not installed on other machines I can do a mail merge in Word which allows me to see data from the database, however this is a bit clunky and I wonder if someone clever could suggest a more elegant solution.

Ideally there would be a file of some description that would be on every machine, that when opened would bring up contact information for all children in an user friendly manner.

Thanks in advance for anyone taking the time to read or respond.

Alan

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Re: Accessing Database over a network on PCs without Access???

Your problem is that without either a server with Terminal Services (and the appropriate licenses) or multiple copies of Access appropriately licensed with separate EULA or without the appropriate version of Access Runtime-only (which doesn't require a license on any machine except the developer's system), you are going to either not run at all or run illegally.

Search this forum for Access Run-Time, which might still require a purchase for your developer system. I don't remember offhand which versions of Access had it and which ones didn't.

Your Word solution might be the only cheap way to do what you want because of the implications of any of the other solutions. Let's face it, Microsoft ain't in it for the good will. They want the money.

 

[Banana]

Re: Accessing Database over a network on PCs without Access???

Two cheap option you could consider

1) Use a free VNC solution. GoToMyPC, TightVNC comes to mind. I'm sure one of freeware may allow multiple connection. Of course that means you would want to have a computer that nobody else will be using and is dedicated to Access.

2) Buy a license of Access 2007. You can then upgrade the database to 2007, and use free runtime engine you can then install on all PC at no extra charges.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Re: Accessing Database over a network on PCs without Access???

Thanks for filling in the details for your #2 solution, Banana - I'm not on AC2K7 yet so I'm not sure about some of the Run-Time details. I know about it, but don't KNOW it.

 

[HiTechCoach]

IMHO, the cheapest solution would be to purchase a copy of Access 2007. This will give you the rights to install the 2007 runtime on the machines without Access. If you do not use menu bars/toolbars, you can even keep the database in 2003 format.

 

[boblarson]

Actually, based on the User Licensing Agreement (I studied it closely for answering another question like this), it isn't a requirement to purchase Access 2007 for using the Access 2007 runtime.

 

[sistemalan]

Thank You Doc Man, HiTech, Banana and Bob,

I'm currently trying out Access 2007 runtime. Fingers crossed it's just what I'm looking for.

Alan