Distributing an MS Access 2010 application

#1

Hi,

What is required to do so? Create an install CD, download install
file, etc like the rest of the world is doing?

I can't find anything related to that on Microsoft's website.

-pw

#2

The Access Development center at Microsoft is:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ff621506.aspx

Specifically, the download for the Access 2010 runtime is:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en...ng=en&id=10910

You might also want to look for "Developer Extensions" (easier to find for
Access 2007 than for 2010). Microsoft has obviously emphasized development
of Access with Share Point and web features and functions, but for
distribution, the Access 2007 information will be useful.

There's a wealth of other information for the Access Developer there.

One good aspect is that, if your users have the full Office 2010
Professional (or higher) edition, all you need to do (or have them do) is to
copy the .ACCDB, .ACCDE, .MDB, or .MDE files and any external files you use.
It'll be very simple if you can put them in a "trusted location".

--
Larry Linson, Microsoft Office Access MVP
Co-author: "Microsoft Access Small Business Solutions", published by Wiley
Access newsgroup support is alive and well in USENET
comp.databases.ms-access

"PW" <emailaddyinsig (AT) ifIremember (DOT) com> wrote

Quote:

Hi,

What is required to do so? Create an install CD, download install
file, etc like the rest of the world is doing?

I can't find anything related to that on Microsoft's website.

-pw

#3

On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:57:19 -0500, "Access Developer"
<accdevel (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

The Access Development center at Microsoft is:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ff621506.aspx

Specifically, the download for the Access 2010 runtime is:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en...ng=en&id=10910

You might also want to look for "Developer Extensions" (easier to find for
Access 2007 than for 2010). Microsoft has obviously emphasized development
of Access with Share Point and web features and functions, but for
distribution, the Access 2007 information will be useful.

There's a wealth of other information for the Access Developer there.

One good aspect is that, if your users have the full Office 2010
Professional (or higher) edition, all you need to do (or have them do) is to
copy the .ACCDB, .ACCDE, .MDB, or .MDE files and any external files you use.
It'll be very simple if you can put them in a "trusted location".

Thank you Larry!

One of the problems we have with distributing an Access application is
the conflicts we get with clients already having a version of Access
installed on their computers. It almost seems worth it to abandon
Access and spend the millions of dollars to have it rewritten in
something else to avoid this!

-paul

#4

"PW" wrote in message news:g53k27557k26md3keafc0r20nqabc2qp53 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com...

Quote:

One good aspect is that, if your users have the full Office 2010
Professional (or higher) edition, all you need to do (or have them do) is
to
copy the .ACCDB, .ACCDE, .MDB, or .MDE files and any external files you
use.
It'll be very simple if you can put them in a "trusted location".

Quote:

Thank you Larry!

One of the problems we have with distributing an Access application is
the conflicts we get with clients already having a version of Access
installed on their computers. It almost seems worth it to abandon
Access and spend the millions of dollars to have it rewritten in
something else to avoid this!

-paul

As noted, I have an article on distributing updates to your applications.
This article is for access 2007 runtime, but the article much also applies
to Access 2010.

http://www.kallal.ca/RunTime/Index.html

While for the last two versions of access, the runtime now has become free
and saves you some nice money, unfortunately the challenge of attempting to
distribute applications to machines with other versions of access remains a
difficult one.

If you really don't have control of the machines such as a client with a few
computers were you can contorl what version, or even an corporate
environment where they standardize each computer setup, then beyond these
cases, then I do strongly suggest you purchase a commercial install script
for Access. I mention this issue in the above article.

--
Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
Pleasenospam_kallal (AT) msn (DOT) com

#5

I empathize with you. I recently spent three days struggling to be able to
use Access 2003 after installing Office 2010 alongside Office 2003 (though
in different folders). I finally threw up my hands and uninstaled Office
2010 then repaired the installation of Office 2003. And, with a few small
odds and ends, seem to have Office 2003 working again, more or less
properly. It seems the last version of Access that "played well with
earlier installed version was 2003.

--
Larry Linson, Microsoft Office Access MVP
Co-author: "Microsoft Access Small Business Solutions", published by Wiley
Access newsgroup support is alive and well in USENET
comp.databases.ms-access

"PW" <emailaddyinsig (AT) ifIremember (DOT) com> wrote

Quote:

On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:57:19 -0500, "Access Developer"
accdevel (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

The Access Development center at Microsoft is:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ff621506.aspx

Specifically, the download for the Access 2010 runtime is:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en...ng=en&id=10910

You might also want to look for "Developer Extensions" (easier to find for
Access 2007 than for 2010). Microsoft has obviously emphasized development
of Access with Share Point and web features and functions, but for
distribution, the Access 2007 information will be useful.

There's a wealth of other information for the Access Developer there.

One good aspect is that, if your users have the full Office 2010
Professional (or higher) edition, all you need to do (or have them do) is
to
copy the .ACCDB, .ACCDE, .MDB, or .MDE files and any external files you
use.
It'll be very simple if you can put them in a "trusted location".

Thank you Larry!

One of the problems we have with distributing an Access application is
the conflicts we get with clients already having a version of Access
installed on their computers. It almost seems worth it to abandon
Access and spend the millions of dollars to have it rewritten in
something else to avoid this!

-paul

#6

On Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:46:41 -0600, "Albert D. Kallal"
<PleaseNOOOsPAMmkallal (AT) msn (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

"PW" wrote in message news:g53k27557k26md3keafc0r20nqabc2qp53 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com...

One good aspect is that, if your users have the full Office 2010
Professional (or higher) edition, all you need to do (or have them do) is
to
copy the .ACCDB, .ACCDE, .MDB, or .MDE files and any external files you
use.
It'll be very simple if you can put them in a "trusted location".

Thank you Larry!

One of the problems we have with distributing an Access application is
the conflicts we get with clients already having a version of Access
installed on their computers. It almost seems worth it to abandon
Access and spend the millions of dollars to have it rewritten in
something else to avoid this!

-paul

As noted, I have an article on distributing updates to your applications.
This article is for access 2007 runtime, but the article much also applies
to Access 2010.

http://www.kallal.ca/RunTime/Index.html

While for the last two versions of access, the runtime now has become free
and saves you some nice money, unfortunately the challenge of attempting to
distribute applications to machines with other versions of access remains a
difficult one.

If you really don't have control of the machines such as a client with a few
computers were you can contorl what version, or even an corporate
environment where they standardize each computer setup,

Nope, we don't.

Quote:

then beyond these
cases, then I do strongly suggest you purchase a commercial install script
for Access. I mention this issue in the above article.

I'll check for some.

Thanks again Albert!

-paul

#7

On Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:42:49 -0500, "Access Developer"
<accdevel (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

I empathize with you. I recently spent three days struggling to be able to
use Access 2003 after installing Office 2010 alongside Office 2003 (though
in different folders). I finally threw up my hands and uninstaled Office
2010 then repaired the installation of Office 2003. And, with a few small
odds and ends, seem to have Office 2003 working again, more or less
properly. It seems the last version of Access that "played well with
earlier installed version was 2003.

We've had to ask some clients politely if they wouldn't mind
installing Access on their machines because of compatibilty problems
with our 2003 application (sometimes). It hasn't been a biggie as we
haven't had a client tell us they actually use Access. Sometimes if
we just recompile their MDB (to an MDE) that works too.

I guess if we ask if they have a version of Access already installed
we could wouldn't have to give them an installation file and do what
Albert suggests. We'd need a version of our application in 2003,
2007, and 2010 though.

Thanks again,

-paulw

#8

"Access Developer" <accdevel (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote in
news:991pm1Fe6nU1 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net:

Quote:

I empathize with you. I recently spent three days struggling to
be able to use Access 2003 after installing Office 2010 alongside
Office 2003 (though in different folders). I finally threw up my
hands and uninstaled Office 2010 then repaired the installation of
Office 2003. And, with a few small odds and ends, seem to have
Office 2003 working again, more or less properly. It seems the
last version of Access that "played well with earlier installed
version was 2003.

That's odd, Larry, as my machine with A2010 on it has a fully
functioning copy of A2003, as well, and it works fine (with the
usual problems switching back and forth between them). There must
have been something else wrong with your machine.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
contact via website only http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

#9

Possibly. But the problem was subjected to the scrutiny of some very
well-qualified Access people, and none of the "solutions" that I came up
with, or that they suggested, "did the trick". It's entirely possible that
there was something else in my software that was a contributing factor... I
have not done a re-install from scratch on this machine (I could say, "old
clunker", a COMPAQ Presario R3470US) since acquiring it in early 2005 with
Win XP factory-installed (yes, I know that's a veritable lifetime in this
business, but I haven't had any graphics- or compute-intensive software that
I had to run on it). As you can guess, there has been a lot of software to
come-and-go since then.

As soon as I can block out the necessary time to install the OS and other
software, I will solve that problem by installing Win 7 (SuperInterGalactic
edition <GRIN>) on a tablet computer that came with Vista and I postponed
setting up until I got the Win 7 DVDs, and installing Office 2003 on my
netbook computer, so far, only used on a couple of trips for e-mail and
Internet.

Once comfortable with the new arrangement, I will decide what to do with
this one. I'm thinking I may take advantage of the assistance available
from the Linux folk in my user group to make this into a Linux machine and
explore Linux and open source software for Linux. I could even set it up as
a MySQL or PostgreSQL server for demos of Access as a client to
ODBC-compliant servers. The disk isn't big enough for "production" use as a
server, but probably fine for demos.

--
Larry Linson, Microsoft Office Access MVP
Co-author: "Microsoft Access Small Business Solutions", published by Wiley
Access newsgroup support is alive and well in USENET
comp.databases.ms-access

"David-W-Fenton" <NoEmail (AT) SeeSignature (DOT) invalid> wrote

Quote:

"Access Developer" <accdevel (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote in
news:991pm1Fe6nU1 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net:

I empathize with you. I recently spent three days struggling to
be able to use Access 2003 after installing Office 2010 alongside
Office 2003 (though in different folders). I finally threw up my
hands and uninstaled Office 2010 then repaired the installation of
Office 2003. And, with a few small odds and ends, seem to have
Office 2003 working again, more or less properly. It seems the
last version of Access that "played well with earlier installed
version was 2003.

That's odd, Larry, as my machine with A2010 on it has a fully
functioning copy of A2003, as well, and it works fine (with the
usual problems switching back and forth between them). There must
have been something else wrong with your machine.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
contact via website only http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

#10

On Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:52:23 -0600, PW
<emailaddyinsig (AT) ifIremember (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

One of the problems we have with distributing an Access application is
the conflicts we get with clients already having a version of Access
installed on their computers. It almost seems worth it to abandon
Access and spend the millions of dollars to have it rewritten in
something else to avoid this!

I distribute my MDE apps in Access 2000 format although I do my work
in Access 2003. Although I have to create the MDE in A2000. Access
2010 should run those just fine.

So it doesn't matter what version of Access they have installed. If
they don't then they can download a free runtime.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/