It's possible to purchase full applications over the web and download
one file to install it on a computer. Is this possible with Access?
When we sell our Access 2003 (2010 hopefully this fall) we make a CD
that includes setup.exe but there are a ton of other files on it too.

It would be great if we could put the installation file on our website
for those with good Internet connections.

-paulw

If you can put it on a CD or DVD, you can put it on a website... however, a
DVD can, IIRC, hold around 5 GB, so not only would the user need an Internet
connection, they'd need a very fast one, because many "high speed" (e.g.,
some DSL) lines are really rather slow (prior to getting Verizon FIOS, I had
a DSL line with download of around 1Mbit, not 1MB) and would take "forever
and a day" to download 5 GB.

Maybe you might split the content... have your database and necessary files
downloadable from your site, and give them a link to the downloadable
runtime files at Microsoft. Let 'em get mad at Microsoft, not you for
(what's really their own service's fault) slow download.

--
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

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:50:47 -0500, "Access Developer"
<accdevel (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:


Thanks Larry. Lots of our clients do have a size limit as some of
them are remote. We do put updates for the MDE (the code and data are
split) on our website but I thought it would be more professional if
we would catch up with everyone else and distribute our application
via the Internet like everybody else seems to be doing. I just
downloaded an Adobe product and installed it right away.

So many clients lose the darn installation CD that we started charging
them for a replacement. They still continue to lose them! <g>

-paulw

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:50:47 -0500, "Access Developer"
<accdevel (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

I want ONE file. One .exe file for people to be able to download
their versions. Like every other company seems to be doing. There
are dozens of files that the installation program creates on a CD,
which includes a setup.exe.

One file like Adobe and seemingly mom and pop companies are able to
create, etc.... Microsoft too.

I am believing this is not possible with MS Access.

I'm not a good person to advise on this, because the last time I worked on a
database that was 'distributed' was in the 1990s and I wasn't the one who
did the "packaging", though I had been involved in testing some installer
software. The client had (literally) thousands of licenses for Access 2.0
from the days before they'd moved to a more-recent edition of Office, so our
'distributable' included installation of Access 2.0, the MDB, third-party
ODBC drivers, and other files, but the third-party installer software made
it as simple as though it were one file. I'm embarrassed to say that I
don't remember which installer software package they used, but one of my
colleagues wrote a fairly complex "script" to make it an easy install.

--
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

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:12:29 -0600, PW
<emailaddyinsig (AT) ifIremember (DOT) com> wrote:

Alberts approach, which I've been happily using, is to create two
setup exe files. One with just your Access database files and the
registry entries and the other with the Access runtime itself. See
http://granitefleet.com/download.htm

I prefer to use whatever version of Access runtime or retail that the
user already has installed. Rather than forcing a new different
version that would then causing existing apps to crash and fail and
thus I get blamed.

I also ship my Access database files in Access 2000 format just to
ensure that any newer version will still run them.


Sample inno script which checks to see if a version of Access is
installed. If not it tells you to install a runtime version of
Access. If installed then it continues to install your FE MDE and
other assorted files.'
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...34660872?hl=en

Sample inno script which "wraps" the package wizard install into a
single .exe
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....191bf1f8?hl=en

Deploying updates to your software in a Runtime environment for Access
2007
http://www.kallal.ca/RunTime/Index.html

Inno Setup
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

The Inno Setup Third-Party Files page is a list of very useful
enhancements. I've been happily using the ISTools to help with
creation of the installer.
--
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/

On Sat, 16 Jul 2011 13:29:14 -0600, Tony Toews
<ttoews (AT) telusplanet (DOT) net> wrote:

One advantage I forgot to mention in having two setup files is that
first setup file does not require any admin privileges as it only
updates folders such as Application Data.

The runtime, of course, does require admin privileges. Now if your
app is designed for home users then this isn't a problem But if for
corp users and they already have a version of Access installed then
this is a huge advantage.

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/