Laptop access to Access 2000 database on server

[BearTrap3]

This is probably a silly question, but my customer has a need for working with an Access database on their server, while onsite at a client's home. They intend to do this with a laptop. Is there a clean way to put a copy of the database on the laptop in question, where they can then take the laptop to a client's home, perform a client assessment which needs to be entered in the database, then bring the laptop (and the database) back to the server? Of course only the assessment done at the client's home would need to be "uploaded" to the server, while not wiping away any changes to the database which may have occurred from users inside the office while the assessor was off site. Sorry for rambling I hope this makes sense.

On the surface the only way I see this being possible is to have the offsite user RDP to the server and run Access right from the server, thereby working with the same physical database as everyone else who is onsite.

Potential trouble with this is availability of internet access at the offsite locations.

Any and all help and suggestions appreciated!!!

Fred

 

[John Spencer (MVP)]

Take a look at using replication within Access. It's not easy to implement and
there are considerations, but this type of thing is what replication is designed
to handle.

 

[Tony Toews]

This is probably a silly question, but my customer has a need for working with an Access database on their server, while onsite at a client's home. They intend to do this with a laptop. Is there a clean way to put a copy of the database on the laptop in question, where they can then take the laptop to a client's home, perform a client assessment which needs to be entered in the database, then bring the laptop (and the database) back to the server? Of course only the assessment done at the client's home would need to be "uploaded" to the server, while not wiping away any changes to the database which may have occurred from users inside the office while the assessor was off site. Sorry for rambling I hope this makes sense.

On the surface the only way I see this being possible is to have the offsite user RDP to the server and run Access right from the server, thereby working with the same physical database as everyone else who is onsite.

Potential trouble with this is availability of internet access at the offsite locations.

Agreed.

Another possibility would be, especially if only creating records, is
to have a special MDB which has just the forms and tables required for
doing the assessment on the laptop. Once you get back to the office
the user then runs some VBA code which does append queries from the
laptop to the backend MDB on the server and then deletes the data from
the laptop.

One advantage to this approach is reducing exposure to lost data in
the, almost certain, event of a laptop going missing or being stolen.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
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