Is there a way to "time bomb" a database in Access 2013, as far as, allow a user to use for so many days, and then does not allow user access after those days? I have a program I am writing in Access 2013, but need to have a secure way to collect a licensing fee at the end of a certain period of time. I searched the net, but no real answer. Much thanks
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I'm looking to tie in office 365 info into my Access database so that I know what licenses are assigned to each user. I've looked into using SharePoint but that appears to be a dead end. I'm sure there is some way to do it with the API.
Unfortunately there isn't a way to automate that. You can manually create a table and name it Office 365, add the corresponding columns and track your licenses via sophisticated queries.
I have a Access 2003 and lower databases. The company i work for is currently using MS Office 2007 and Access 2003 instead of Access 2007 because of issues with library references. We're currently converting the Access 2003 databases to Access 2007, but some users are already being upgraded to MS Office 2013 and Access 2013.
I am aware that Access will only change library references when design changes are made in Access 2013 which is not something we want because it will cause issues for users still using Access 2007.
My question is what constitutes a design change? For example we have some forms who's labels change based on user selection, would that be considered a design change? We do not want Access 2013 users to inadvertently make design changes.
The only way to avoid users making inadvertent changes would be to either use the Runtime instead of a full version of Access on their machine or force the database to open in Runtime mode by changing the your front-end's database extension to accdr.
Now, if your aplication relies on the standard office references, you should be ok (for most of them) as Access will use the right one for the version you have.
Any any rate, the fact that you are worried about users making inadvertent modification seems to imply that your users are sharing a front-end, which is not the recommended way to deploy an Access application: the application should be split.
Database containing the shared tables of the application remain on a network share. The Front-end, containing the UI and business code, should be deployed on the local machine of each user. The front-end only contain links to the tables in the backend.
This is a safe multi-user design since only data is shared, not the UI state.
Now if you have that design, if would not matter too much if users made accidental updates since that would only be local to their machine.
In that configuration, you can also keep sharing a specific mdb database with various front-ends for Access 2003, 2007, 2013 being deployed for different users.
Deployment is the hard part since you want that to happen automatically when there is a new version of the front-end available. There are tools like Auto FE Updater that can help.
I have a website online with just HTML and I am not willing to use any other programming language apart from Javascript. All I need to do is connect my Microsoft Access database on my computer to a form hosted online so when information is submitted online it is updated on MS access the next time I open the file up. Is this possible and how can it be done?
Turns out, you can do this with zero code. If you use office 365, and publish an Access web forms.
Any information entered into the Access web form will automatic appear in your local database. The synchronizing of data from the web site and pulling down of the records to a local copy works automatic and without the need to write any code. In fact the sync starts automatic when you launch the client application. (it runs in disconnected mode). And any records you enter in the client application will also sync up and appear on the web site.
So, you can use Access and write zero code, and this two way sync feature is built in.
You need Access 2010, and either SharePoint 2010 (enterprise), or you can use office 365 and the $6 per month p1 plan which also does support Access web publishing.
However, I suspect issues of user logons and security may well be a greater issue here, and thus office 365 might not be correct from a user logon point of view. You can invite up to 50 users to that site for the basic $6 per month, but all users of the site will require a logon (which can be due to being invited to the site).
There are two videos of mine here showing this setup in action here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL27E956A1537FE1C5&feature=plcp
I think what you are trying to do is very impractical. You'll need to use Server Side Javascript to insert your data into a database, preferably SQL Server, and then you'll have to write some kind of code to sync the SQL Server Database to your Access database.
Alternately, you could setup your Access database so it connects to the same instance of SQL Server as your website using ODBC linked tables or ADO. I cannot really recommend this, especially if the data you have in your Access database is anything you wouldn't want to be public. Also, using MS Access to access a database across the WAN/Internet is really not recommended although it can certainly be done, as long as you aren't working with large amounts of data, large quantity of records, etc.
I am not willing to use any other programming language apart from Javascript.
And why aren't you willing to use something else? I don't think you're going to get anywhere if you don't open your mind to using the right tools for the right job.
Here's something that might help you get connected to SQL from Javascript:
How to connect to SQL Server database from JavaScript in the browser?
I use Access 2000 at the moment with a Sagekey Access 2000 MSI Wizard.
For the ability to distribute my app as a runtime I had to buy the Office 2000 Professional software. I then realised for effective and reliable installation I had to buy the Sagekey runtime.
This all works well.
Lately I feel I could benefit from the features of a later version of Access. I can't seem to find info on what I need to buy specifically to put myself in the same position as I am now (shipping MDEs with a Sagekey installer to customers) but using Access 2010 instead.
Can I just buy Access 2010 on it's own these days? I'm checking with Sagekey about support for Access 2010 as it doesn't appear to be listed on their site - Access 2007 is the latest there - but of course Access 2007 seems a bit like an endangered species so I think I should avoid that.
Back in the Access 2000 days, the developer kit and extensions was quite expensive for Access and was a SEPERATE purchase. And as you found out, you still needed to purchase a commercial installer like sagekey. Having to purchase both was quite expensive.
Today, the developer kit and runtime system for Access 2010 is free. However, that system still ships with a very weak install and setup system that tends to cause problems if the end user has other versions of Access installed. So, once again, your best bet is sagekey.
There is a buy now button on their page that shows 2007, but if you click on the order tab a 2010 version is also available.
So at least the runtime is free for Access, and is included for the basic price of Access. This does reduce the cost of this system overall.
I've written an Access 2003 application to handle internal things at my company over the past couple years and we are talking about upgrading all of our computers to Office 2007 which means Access will be updated. Is this going to cause a problem for me?
Allen Browne, Microsoft access MVP, has written a comprehensive article on Microsoft Access 2007 and upgrading:
Converting to Access 2007
Here is an article by Microsoft:
Transitioning Your Existing Access Applications to Access 2007
In case you are not aware, it is possible to try 2007 for free. I would not recommend trying on a PC that you use regularly for other Access work, it is not impossible, but things get awkward.
If you wish to run your 2003 version on 2007, make sure that you create an mde, otherwise you will run into problems. Access 2007 treats several controls in a different way, for example, textboxes with date fields get calendars attached. You will also need to check your references. I also recommend that you self-certify your projects. Other than that, I have seen posts on a number of problems, but these are usually specific to the poster.
We just recently went through this.
One issue we found was converting reports to Excel. They took that functionality out of Access, so if you do that you'll need to convert it programmatically using the Excel COM object model. I ended up writing a function to replace the old functionality but you still have a bit of juggling to do.