I am unable to determine if the following is possible:
Create queries in Access
Export as a list to a SharePoint 2010 list
Each time the list is accessed within SharePoint, it executes the query and brings back up to date information.
Any information would be appreciated, thanks.
This will not work, the list you produce as an export of your query is static and has no links to database tables that originated the data. To accomplish this task you will need to look at creating an external list in SharePoint by utilizing the business data catalog. This allows you to point SharePoint directly at database tables. I have linked the walkthrough for doing this below:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee231515.aspx
Generally speaking, you'd want to use SQL Server or another supported SQL engine that is network accessible to house this data. Access isn't ideal.
Related
Looked around quite a bit before posting this - I just can't seem to get this seemingly very simple question answered (I think I missing something!)
From within MS Access 2007 I have several related tables that deal with inventory of products. I simply want to export that table data into a SharePoint List (or Lists), and link them. Users will generally just use the SP lists in order to search, view, and sometimes modify the data (i.e. mark a product as exhausted). For our work group this is preferential to opening MS Access repetitively.
The problem I'm having is that the linking features within Access don't make sense to me! I seem to be missing something fundamental here, despite reading over the MS documentation and various sources.
One can export a table, but there is no linkage between the created list and the original table. Changes made on the SP list will not be reflected in the original table which makes this a lot less useful?
One can import a list, but that linked table that is generated is NOT the original data table that I started with (the new, generated SP-linked table is a different entity than the original table. Updates to that new SP-linked table are not reflected in any original table that I had). This method seems very backwards, as you ought to have your relational DB setup correctly before attempting to make SP lists that surface that data. It seems backwards to me to make SP lists that are then wedged into an existing DB without any consideration to the existing DB structure?
So - I think that there is something fundamental that I'm missing here. It would seem that one ought to be able to just use SP to surface/provide views/editing of existing Access tables.
Isn't there just a simple way to have a SP list directly linked to an existing Access table, so that changes in the SP list are reflected in the original Access table?
I believe the solution you're looking for is the ability to "Publish" an Access DB to a SharePoint site. If you're using SharePoint 2007, the published copy will be read-only in SharePoint but users can still do everything else you described.
Details on this type of Publish are in the Office Help here:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Publish-a-database-to-a-SharePoint-site-8287ed04-9c65-46c4-bbdb-c965c56b018c
To quote from it:
Click the Microsoft Office Button Office button image , point to
Publish , and then click Document Management Server.
Type the URL of
the SharePoint site where you want to publish the database. If you
used the same location the last time you opened Access, the database
appears in the Publish to Web Server dialog box.
NOTE: This option is available only if your database is saved in Office Access 2007 format.
Select the library, such as a document library, where you
want to publish the database, and then click Open.
In the Name box,
type a file name for your database.
Click Publish.
If you have SharePoint 2010 or newer, users in SharePoint can have full CRUD (Create, Read, Update & Delete) capabilities to both the data and even the DB design without having to touch Access once the DB has been published. This is described in more detail here:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Build-and-publish-an-Access-database-to-SharePoint-e68bf007-410c-43b2-bf21-322ddbcf5411
The steps to do so are simply:
Open the Access file
Click 'Save and Publish' in the File menu
Choose 'Publish to Access Services' under the Publish heading
Specify the URL to the SharePoint site you wish to publish it to
Afternoon,
My company makes use of Microsofts Sharepoint facility to organize documents and such; we also use Sharepoint to hold project specific resources used by multiple people.
Question
Is it possible to access Sharepoint from within MS Access? I don't mean open it, I mean actually writing to or reading from files that are stored on it? If it's possible is there a particular module I should read up on or am required to import into any projects? (Example code or related resource would be appreciated)
Potential Use Case
Employee A makes a change to a table in a database (adding a record) which may be required by Employee B in the future. Employee B should be-able to retrieve it directly from Sharepoint without having to open a browser, download the file and manually add the table.
Thanks for any information you can give me as I know this is an odd one...
SharePoint does have MS Access integration. You can setup access to use SharePoint lists as their datasource, allowing you to edit the data from Access or from the browser.
This link provides some video tutorials on how to publish an Access web database to SharePoint. Essentially you create and edit the database in Access and you publish to SharePoint. This works well for simple databases, but it doesn't work as well for more complex databases.
HI!
Does anyone have any idea how to synchronize MS Access data to SharePoint portal. I would like to link both of this together and trigger a workflow upon receiving a new data entry.
Hope you could advice on it.
Thanks!
In Access you can have so called "linked tables". You can have access linked tables with a Sharepoint installation. In Sharepoint this linked table manifests itself as a regular list, so you can have a workflow trigger on each new item created.
There is a nice tutorial here: How to Link SharePoint Server 2007 Lists with Microsoft Access 2007 and for Sharepoint 2010 and Acccess 2010 Microsoft hast written something nice: Synchronize a SharePoint 2010 list with Access 2010.
Additionally let me show you some Screenshots from Access. When you go to External Data > Export > Sharepoint List (see next screen)
When you click on that button you get the following dialog where you can select where to export your table to:
The same dialog you get when you Right click on a table, go to Export > Sharepoint List.
Now if you want to synchronize your data, you need to link that created Sharepoint list to your Access DB. So you click on External Data > Import > From Sharepoint List and you get the following dialog:
When you have a linked table it is synchronized with Sharepoint.
I think you are looking for this article.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/add-a-database-as-a-data-source-HA010100908.aspx
Basically, you need to create a new Data Connection Library (pick from the Library list in the "Create" page). And then follow the steps depending on the connection method (i.e. Single Sign-On, custom connection string, or user id/password).
The process involves migrating your access tables to SharePoint. So if you moved or migrate a table in Access to SharePoint AND THEN choose to link the table, then it is a live connection to SharePoint. This is a bi-direction synnc of that table. So any change in Access (any update to that linked table) will see changes sent to the same table (list) in SharePoint. This is a VERY different process then trying to sync a whole file. So power-point files, or even a Access file does not work well at the FILE level, and you don't get any kind of multi-user setup.
However, if you migrate the tables to SharePoint lists, then any sql query you build in Access against that linked table will work just fine. And that includes append query, update query, or just a select for data.
And you can even work against these linked tables in off-line mode. This means that you can continue to update the tables even without network connection. When you do finally get wi-fi or some internet connection, then the data will auto-sync (both ways) and tables will update missing or changed data.
Note that you can even migrate and maintain related data, and SharePoint now supports relations and maintains those relations for you (referential integrity between tables is supported when using Access 2010 (or later) and SharePoint 2010 (or later).
VERY careful steps are required to migrate related tables. Access will migrate and send related tables of data to SharePoint (and maintain the relations for you). You simple have to ensure that your relations are of a type that SharePoint supports.
This means your PK has to be a autonumber ID type, and the foreign key has to be standard long data type. Since this setup is the vast majority of Access relationships, then these types of related tables move rather well to SharePoint. However, if you PK/FK setup is say a string, then such relationships don't work in SharePoint.
The other issue is to keep in mind that performance issues can arise when the row count exceeds 5000 rows when using Office 365 or hosted SharePoint. If your SharePoint system in on-premises then you can turn off some of these limits.
Migration of related data tables is easy, but you need to ensure you setup the relationships using the table lookup wizard in most cases. Sometimes you can use the relationship window, but in most cases, you need to re-build the relationship in a correct way BEFORE you migrate the tables to SharePoint. If your don't have related data, and just a few tables, then you don't really have to do much of anything in Access before you migrate such tables.
As noted, once migrated to SharePoint, then any sql query you execute against such linked tables will work fine. So no need to update the table local, or on SharePoint - the whole process is fully automatic and synced for you.
This video shows how to migrate related data tables to SharePoint if that is your requirement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wdjYIby_b0&t=0s&list=PL27E956A1537FE1C5&index=3
Edit
Given that the tags are for SharePoint 2007, then you will find that access 2010 (or later) and SharePoint 2010 (or later) is required for referential integrity to work. And pre Access 2010, you find performance of linked lists to be rather slow, and table row counts needs to be keep small. (under 10,000 rows).
I've been playing around with hosting on discountasp.net and am in the process of hosting my second web app. Being that discountasp charges you per database and not per sql server or total space used by all of your databases, both apps need to share one database
I need to create all of the tables from the database used by the second application in the live database. I can't just import the mdf file because that would drop all of the data already stored by the first application. Is there a way to automatically generate the scripts or simple sql commands to create the tables in the mdf file from within visual studio?
Also, since multiple applications will ultimately use the same database I'd like to add a prefix to each table names - like App1_Table1. Is there a simple way to rename tables inside VS 2010? Further is there a way to rename the tables but have the entities framework ignore the prefix when generating it's classes?
Thanks for your help, your answers will save me a ton of time I could be programming with :).
There are many options available to you.
In Visual Studio there's database schema compare functionality.
ScriptDb is a simple console app written in C# that uses SQL Management Objects (SMO) to script all the objects in a database. It will work against any SQL Server 2000 or 2005 database. It creates a directory tree structure with a similar hierarchy to that in Object Explorer in SSMS, with a separate file for each object.
There's also an option to script database objects from SSMS. Right-click on a database -> Task -> Generate scripts.
I'm usually not working with Microsoft products. I have an MS Access 2007 project here, and I know that the MSSQL Server with the Database has some procedures. How can I make them visible? I can just browse trough tables and views...
Thanks and regards,
Jan Oliver
When you say access project, are using the term that you have a project you're working on, or you do specifically mean you're working with an access data project? (ADP). The ms access term ADP has an specific meaning that's very important in your context.
In ms access a good number of developers simply use ODBC linked tables to data is sitting on SQL server. There's also an option in ms access to create what is called a Access Data Project (ADP). When you choose to create an access data project then any view design services such as the relationships editor, table design etc. looks like you're developing inside of the access desktop client, but in fact behind the scenes access is sending DDL (data definition language) commands to SQL server to make those modifications on the server side object. So, you CAN modify server side objects inside of ms-access. No local tables can exist when you create a ADP.
What this means that the version of access and SQL server have to be more closely matched then if you're not using an access data project. If you open up the access database and look in the query table, you should see stored procedures appearing in the list. Access should let you modify them.
So take a look of the file extension, if this is actually an access data project, then the file extension for the access database will be *.adp.
If the file extension is mdb, or accDB, then this is not an access data project, but is a traditional access database in which linked tables to SQL server are being used. This this case of non ADP, then the views and tables you link to will only appear in the tables table. Furthermore ANY design changes you make will be done using the SQL server management tools and NOT the access client. So, changes to tables and views and procedures etc. are NOT made and CAN NOT be made inside of the access client like they can when you're using an access data project. Despite this limitation, most developers prefer using linked tables as opposed to an access data project because of the loose tie between the version of SQL server. In fact you can use even different database servers in these cases such as Oracle or MySql. The other significant advantage of linked (odbc) tables is that the linked tables allows multiple data sources from local files, server based etc. And, you also can have local tables (ADP does not allow local tables in the client).
So your ability to edit or not edit the server side objects inside of access will be determined by the above scenario IF you are in fact using a ADP or not.