Looking for a MDE walkthrough

[Daminc]

Hi everyone

I have a glossary database and an ASP page to view it.

I'm pretty much a beginner with this topic so you'll have to forgive me if I have some difficulty with terminology. I recently thought about putting my database on to a disk as a kind of .exe file.

That's when I first heard of MDE files. Looking further there's something called a switchboard. At first I thought it could emulate my ASP page. Wrong!

I'm a bit lost where to start so I was hopeing to find some sort of layman's tutorial or a walkthrough to guideme.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Mile-O]

An MDE is just a compiled mdb file.

To make one goto:

Tools -> Database Utilities -> Make MDE file...

 

[Daminc]

I saw that one. But what about creating a front end to replace the ASP page. Isn't that what a switchboard's all about?

(oh, and thanks for the quick reply )

 

[Mile-O]

A switchboard is simply a form that Access creates to allow navigation throughout your database.

 

[Daminc]

Oh. Then what can I use to replace the ASP page as the front end? Baring in mind that I've a lot of things on my front page:

 

[Mile-O]

I have no idea as I've never used ASP.

 

[Daminc]

Bugger

The search continues...

Thanks for having a look though

 

[yippie_ky_yay]

Hey Daminc,

You have a couple of options that I can think of:

1) You can create new forms from scratch in Access (and just follow the design of your ASP page).

2) There is a browser viewer you can add to a form that will display your page (from Design view in your form, click the "More controls" button on your toolbar, go down the list until you get to "Microsoft Web Browser". Now on the menu go to "View" - "Code". There are 2 drop down boxes at the top. Change the first one to "Form" and the second one to "Load" (it will start some code for you). Now add the line: Me!WebBrowser.Navigate "http://yourwebpage.asp". You can then make this form your "switchboard" if you like (I think Switchboard is just a term for the form that will automatically load up when the database is activated).

I don't know how reliable the second option is though because I only use it myself for reports I create on-line.

Let us know what you end up doing!

-Sean