Form as a file

[asu81]

Hi, I'm terribly new to Access, so forgive me if this makes no sense

Let's say you have multiple people inputing data to an Access database through forms. Is it possible to let these forms be opened as files directly through the Explorer file system? So that each person might have their own form to input data with. Or how do you generally manage this in an effective way?

Thank you!

 

[Bryan]

There are a couple ways that multiple users can access your database.

The first is to split the database into a front end and back end. The back end contains all of the entered data. The front end contains things like the forms and reports. The idea is that the back end can be placed on a server so that multiple users can access it using the front end, which is placed on each user's computer. Designing your database in this manner increases its complexity, as you need to account for things such as record locks to insure that two users don't try to update the same data at the same time.

The second, much more complex way is to program the database as an Access Web Database. I only mention this because you asked about using Explorer, which I took to mean Internet Explorer. This requires Access 2010 and a server running specific Microsoft services that can accommodate such a database. I believe that designing these is much more complex.

There are ways to run access with other servers such as SQL Servers, but that may be more complex than you're asking about.