I know this is a pretty ridiculous question, but I'm forced to ask, because 
the operations manager of my company who hired me to build this database for 
the returns department does not want to spend $1,300 to buy licenses to put 
Access on all of the computers in the returns department. (Talk about being a 
tad short-sighted...) He wants me to build a web interface, which I've tried 
to explain to him would be a bad idea, not to mention the fact that it won't 
work for what we need because my entry forms are parsing data and changing 
things on the form itself as data is entered... but I don't think he's 
getting the message. I need to know if there's a way to open an Access 
database for use without actually having Access installed. I was going to use 
OpenOffice, but I would have to recreate all my forms and rewrite the code 
for them in OpenOffice VBA, which I know nothing about. I need something that 
can open my Access forms.

If anybody has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. I'm actually 
hoping there ISN'T just so this guy will have no other choice than to fork 
out the money. Our operations manager has always been notoriously cheap when 
it comes to purchasing new software. It's funny to me that he's unwilling to 
spend $1,300 on a project he himself requested, yet he requested this project 
because the returns department is backed up and has almost a million dollars 
worth of product sitting on the shelves waiting to be dealt with, not to 
mention the couple million more we haven't received credit on from the 
vendors because it takes two weeks to research a single item with the system 
they use now, which is what this database I was hired to develop is supposed 
to replace.

Welcome to corporate America.

Do you guys have excel or no office products what so ever? If you have excel 
you can create a form and then set up and link it with an access table.

"Nicholas Scarpinato" wrote:

> I know this is a pretty ridiculous question, but I'm forced to ask, because 
> the operations manager of my company who hired me to build this database for 
> the returns department does not want to spend $1,300 to buy licenses to put 
> Access on all of the computers in the returns department. (Talk about being a 
> tad short-sighted...) He wants me to build a web interface, which I've tried 
> to explain to him would be a bad idea, not to mention the fact that it won't 
> work for what we need because my entry forms are parsing data and changing 
> things on the form itself as data is entered... but I don't think he's 
> getting the message. I need to know if there's a way to open an Access 
> database for use without actually having Access installed. I was going to use 
> OpenOffice, but I would have to recreate all my forms and rewrite the code 
> for them in OpenOffice VBA, which I know nothing about. I need something that 
> can open my Access forms.
> 
> If anybody has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. I'm actually 
> hoping there ISN'T just so this guy will have no other choice than to fork 
> out the money. Our operations manager has always been notoriously cheap when 
> it comes to purchasing new software. It's funny to me that he's unwilling to 
> spend $1,300 on a project he himself requested, yet he requested this project 
> because the returns department is backed up and has almost a million dollars 
> worth of product sitting on the shelves waiting to be dealt with, not to 
> mention the couple million more we haven't received credit on from the 
> vendors because it takes two weeks to research a single item with the system 
> they use now, which is what this database I was hired to develop is supposed 
> to replace.
> 
> Welcome to corporate America.

You can most certainly deploy access applications to computers that don't 
have a copy of MS access installed.

There is a royalty free, license free version of MS access that you can 
purchase that allows you to distribute that copies to as many computers as 
you want. Once this runtime system is installed on all of these computers, 
then you can simply place your application on those computers as you do now.

For versions of access prior to 2007, there's a onetime cost to purchase 
what is called the developer tools for MS access.

For access 2007, the runtime is completely free and can be downloaded by a 
anyone to be placed on any computer, and then you simply copy your 
applications to those computers and it will run.

more info here:
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/developereditionversions.htm


-- 
Albert D. Kallal    (Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
pleaseNOOSpamKallal@msn.com

Albert... I don't know what this forum would do without you.

However, there is a catch to this. I'm developing this database in Access 
2003. VSTO is almost as expensive as the licenses, and my operations manager 
isn't going to want to spend that much money for one application that only 
one person is going to use.

However... aren't the Access 2007 Developer Tools free to download now? So 
if I could persuade my operations manager to get me the upgrade version of 
Access 2007, I should be able to convert my database to Access 2007, download 
the Developer Tools for free, and distribute the runtime as needed... correct?

"Albert D. Kallal" wrote:

> You can most certainly deploy access applications to computers that don't 
> have a copy of MS access installed.
> 
> There is a royalty free, license free version of MS access that you can 
> purchase that allows you to distribute that copies to as many computers as 
> you want. Once this runtime system is installed on all of these computers, 
> then you can simply place your application on those computers as you do now.
> 
> For versions of access prior to 2007, there's a onetime cost to purchase 
> what is called the developer tools for MS access.
> 
> For access 2007, the runtime is completely free and can be downloaded by a 
> anyone to be placed on any computer, and then you simply copy your 
> applications to those computers and it will run.
> 
> more info here:
> http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/developereditionversions.htm
> 
> 
> -- 
> Albert D. Kallal    (Access MVP)
> Edmonton, Alberta Canada
> pleaseNOOSpamKallal@msn.com
> 
> 
> 

Sorry... After re-reading your post, I answered my own question.


It's been a long week.

Nicholas Scarpinato wrote:
> Sorry... After re-reading your post, I answered my own question.
>
>
> It's been a long week.

Just don't apply SP1 to your Access 2007 (if you get it).  The SP1 for the 
free runtime has not been released yet and a file built with SP1 won't run 
on a runtime install that is pre-SP1.

-- 
Rick Brandt, Microsoft Access MVP
Email (as appropriate) to...
RBrandt   at   Hunter   dot   com 

Thanks for the heads-up on that, Rick.

"Rick Brandt" wrote:

> Nicholas Scarpinato wrote:
> > Sorry... After re-reading your post, I answered my own question.
> >
> >
> > It's been a long week.
> 
> Just don't apply SP1 to your Access 2007 (if you get it).  The SP1 for the 
> free runtime has not been released yet and a file built with SP1 won't run 
> on a runtime install that is pre-SP1.
> 
> -- 
> Rick Brandt, Microsoft Access MVP
> Email (as appropriate) to...
> RBrandt   at   Hunter   dot   com 
> 
> 
>