I am extremely new to Ms-Access. I have a central back end access database in server computer. And all the users have the front end user interface installed on their system.
Now, whenever I make any changes to the interface in my local, i need to re-install the updated interface on each of their system. Is their any way that i can do so that i will make the changes only on my local and it will be automatically reflected on all the users' systems.
Thank you.
Ok there are a couple of options that you can do to either fully or paritally automate this process.
Partial Automation
If you don't have a lot of users and you don't want to do a great deal of coding you can write a simple batchfile or vbs file which you set up on the users desktop as an icon. Batch file code would show the following type of information.
#Echo Off
REM Copy your file from server location to local user machine
xcopy "F:\ServerDirectory\databasename.mdb" "C:\ClientDirectory\databasename.mdb" /E /Y /R
Set this up on the users machine as an icon and whenever you want them to update their front end ask them to double click the icon. This will overwrite their client with whatever you place in the location on the server. It is advisable to create all table links to the database back end having UNC paths as well.
I have used this successfully for various applications - I make changes to the front end place in appropriate location on the server and then do a quick e-mail to people just to ask them to double click the bat file icon.
Full Automation
Programmatically set version control up using visual basic so the client checks version number of the client against a server number and if the client is not the latest will download a new version.
This is more involved and full instructions are available here.
Front End Auto Update
When you deploy an MS Access solutions like this, you need to decide whether to share the client MDB file between all users, or distribute copies to each user. It sounds like you have taken the second option. Each choice has merits and disadvantages. If you stay with the current approach, you might look at a scripting option to deploy updated client MDB files between users.
Related
i have a shared access application, i created an accde file for 32-bit machine, when user open the application he/she getting a security warning
is there any way to disable this message from appearing to the users
thank you
You have to set their computer to be a trusted source. In order to get around this issue, you will need to create a Digital Certificate. Digital Certificates are good only on the computer they are created on, so if this database will be used on multiple computers then each one will have to create a Digital Certificate.
To do this, you will need to perform the following tasks:
Click on Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Office -> Microsoft
Office Tools -> Digital Certificate For VBA Projects (If you don’t
have this, you will need to contact your IT Dept.)
Enter a Certificate Name. Make it obvious like MyProgramName and Click OK
Open the Access database which contains the security warning you want to bypass
Go into the Design View of any Module
Click on Tools -> Digital Signature
Choose your Digital Certificate you created in Step 2
Save and close the database
Re-Open the database. You will now be prompted with a different Security Warning that states the file has been digitally signed.
Check off the “Always trust files from this publisher…” box and click the Open button
All subsequent times you enter this database, you will not be prompted with a security warning.
Note - I wrote the above for our company based on Office 2003. If you're using a more recent version, the instructions may vary somewhat.
other way is following:
click on file and then options
click on trust center and then trust center settings on the right
then click on trusted locations and add new location
browse for the location and save.
that's it.. done.. now no more warnings..
That is a standard warning to indicate the file you are opening has web links and macros.
If you trust the file, just say OK or “Allow”
You can control if this message is displayed: Office button > Excel Options button > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings button (I have no idea why they have this extra button, DUMB DESIGN! )
More Information can be found here
I have an Access database that processes other Access databases. I get OP's error when connecting to one of the other Access databases. To fix the issues, I opened the other Access database and clicked Enabled Content. Then, the Access database is trusted and OP's error doesn't occur when connecting to that Access database from another Access database.
You can create a registry key that will add the directory as a trusted location and will not show the warning anymore. What's nice about this method is that you can easily automate this to happen on the computers where you deploy your app. See method #2 or #3 in this blog: http://www.accessrepairnrecovery.com/blog/fix-microsoft-access-security-notice
And in case the blogs ever gets removed, here is the important bits:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Access\Security\Trusted Locations\Location20] “Path”=”C:\Database\”
“Description”=”My Database location”
Explanation about the key:
– The number “14.0” is the version of MS Office. You can change the numbers that represent the version you are executing.
– The “Location20” is a unique name that you assign. 20 can be any number that is not previously used. Other programs include default MS Access wizards, already have used other numbers. But if you want to make more than one path as trusted location, then each location must end up with different number.
– The “C:\Database\” is the physical path that you want to set to be as Trusted Location. You can place any path that you choose here.
By copy and pasting the above coding into a text file and save it with a name such as RemoveSecurityWarning.reg, you can then run the file into your PC’s registry just by making double click on the file.
The best way is to add the location of the document or the document itself to the Trusted Locations in Registry (if you use only Access runtime on client machines, there is no way to add it through the Office application, like you would do in Excel).
Here is the answer:
Adding Trusted Location to Access Run Time
You would need to create a new Location key and add the necessary Path (and Description) strings inside with the appropriate location of your file. This way the nag dialog will be gone and you won't need to worry about certificates.
Shared may mean it is located on a network share. It is not advisable to add a network location to the Trusted locations and you would need to set the additional flag AllowNetworkLocations to 1. I would advise you to copy the Access modules to the user computers, which would also make things better with the speed I believe.
If anybody else have this problem, it happened to me, with a shared file on a network environment, and the simplest solution was to install Microsoft Office service pack 2, even better is having automatic updates for Office turned on. You can find it here.
Ok, our current problem is the classical "trying to allow multiple users access onto one fe file (this is in runtime currently)" - This cannot be handled (at least in AC2007) and is best solved by installing a FE on each computer that is using it.
This poses another problem for us, we have many employees who we want to be able to have access to it, yet the program probably doesn't warrent our techs to push out updates of this file to each computer with their "patches" (plus there may be added costs to doing such for us).
We would really prefer the ability for users to open a link from our internal portal to the file as can be currently achieved. We are mulling over the possibility of pushing out 4 or 5 copies of the FE application on a shared folder and creating an Access program that would essentially check to see if a FE app is open say FE1 and if so it would open FE2 (and so on) then close the sharepoint linked database that did the checking so a new user could open that. This would allow multiple users access to the same BE information using the same FE program.... would this work? Any ideas of how to go about it?
Yes it works, the idea is to create a function that checks for the open file, if it finds its open it replies with an error, on the error you can move to the following database. Here is a sample code:
Option Explicit
Function FileLocked(strFileName As String) As Boolean
On Error Resume Next
Open strFileName For Binary Access Read Write Lock Read Write As #1
Close #1
If Err.Number = 0 Then
Application.FollowHyperlink "c:\MasterMAX.accdr"
DoCmd.CloseDatabase
End If
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
Application.FollowHyperlink "c:\MasterMAX2.accdr"
End If
End Function
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about SharePoint, so I can't say if my proposed solution is still viable when SharePoint is involved.
If your problem is just how to distribute the file to all machines, why don't you let your users start a batch file that copies the Access frontend from a network share to each machine and starts it?
We are doing something similar at work (without SharePoint, though), and I described our setup here:
How to automatically update MS-Access 2007 application
We have put the batch file on a network share as well. The users have just shortcuts on their desktops to the batch file on the network share, so it's easy to update the batch file as well.
Maybe you can do something similar (let the users run the batch file from SharePoint, which copies and starts the Access frontend).
first of all, i'm not an expert programmer by any means so please excuse if my lingo is off.
I programmed a small project for school, basically it's just a simple cash register application. The user can select products to sell, create new products etc.
When selling products, the user has the option to "print" a bill, ie the program fills a string with some information and creates a new textfile via streamwriter. Also, once the program gets closed, the current stock of products gets saved in a serialized file. The same file gets loaded every time the program starts.
Everything worked fine during debugging, however I created an msi package to test it and neither saving the textfile nor the serialized file works because apparently I don't have sufficient permission to do so.
Can someone tell me how to give the user who installed the programm with the msi the rights needed to make my program work?
I assume you are running on Vista or newer OS? This is the case where UAC prevents your normal applications to write to Programs Files (where again I assume you have installed the application).
The recommended locations to save user data are mentioned in this StackOverflow thread:
Best place to save user information for Windows XP and Vista applications
You can also set permissions in the package during the installation using MsiLocakPermissions table, but I would not recommend it. Program Files folder should be used to store application resources, not user data.
I am writing a program in vb.net that requires a user to log in before he can use the application. The main user is created when the program is installed, similar to how windows works when it is installed.
The main user can add additional users to the program. I already know that I should store the passwords encrypted. My question is, where should I store the usernames and passwords? The registry, Isolated storage or .config file. I don't want any user to be able to modify/delete that file as the other user would obviously not be able to log in. Also, this file should be accessible for any user that logs into the computer.
The computer is not guaranteed to be connected to the internet, so it must be stored locally.
Thanks
To tell you the truth if someone has the will power to look for the file they will find it, so storage can help up security but I would focus on the contents of the file itself.
You could try to store the data of the application as a encrypted file which could stop the amateur attempts but as you are using the .net framework your program could could be decompiled and any symmetric encryption algorithms could be rendered useless.
I think your best bet would be to either generate a seed according to the computer the program is on, and if decryption fails call home or go into Lock Down.
Another option would be to store the encrypted (encrypted with your symmetric key) file and a hash file (in different locations probably). If the hash of the loaded file then does not match the hash file your program could then call home (If you have a home to call).
This is just a idea, haven't actually tried anything like this.
If you are not able to use windows users/credentials in any way on the machine, then there really is no absolute way to prevent the file from being removed/changed, Since anyone on the computer has the same access as the main user, who needs rights to modify the file in order for him to add users through the program.
The only way to do it for sure is to have the main user logon with a different user name, and set the file permissions on that file/folder to make sure that only the main user has modify permission to the file (and the other user account does not have the right to modify permissions). I know you said it wouldn't work in your environment(which is?) but you might be able to create users and run stuff under different credentials through your code without having the users log on any different.
The only crazy way I can think of is to create a service on the computer that once it starts running, it opens and holds a handle to that file with sharing set such that no other process can open the file for writing. You'd of course have to workout some way for the main user to be able to add users.
I've got an Access 2007 database that I developed which connects to SQL Server for the actual data storage. I used the Package Solution Wizard to create a distributable installer which included access runtime (with an ACCDE file) which I went around and installed on 15 or so PCs. Anyway, my question is, what is the best way to distribute updates to this database? Right now I'd need to go around and remove and reinstall. That's not a problem... I was just wondering if there was another way.
I've tried leaving the front end on a network share but it seems that most people suggest storing the front-end on the local machine, which makes sense. The problems I've run into when I leave it on a network share (at least with Access 2003 mdbs) is that I find myself needing to compact and repair often and I also have to kill the open sessions (user's who have the file open) when upgrading. I would imagine it could also hypothetically create an unnecessary bottleneck if the user was not on the local network.
Automating front-end distribution is trivial. It's a problem that has been solved repeatedly. Tony Toews's http://autofeupdater.com is one such solution that is extremely easy to implement and completely transparent to the end user.
We developed a vbscript 'launcher' for our access apps. That is what is linked to on the start menu of user's pcs and it does the following.
It checks a version.txt file located on a network share to see whether it contains different text to a locally stored copy
If the text is different it copies the access mdb and the new version.txt to the user's hard drive.
Finally it runs the mdb in access
In order to distribute an update to the user's pc all that is required is to change the text in version.txt on the network share.
Perhaps you can implement something similar to this
Make a batch file on the server (network drive).
Create a shortcut link to that batch file.
Copy the shortcut to User's Desktop.
When user double-clicks on shortcut, it will copy a fresh copy from network to local.
Replace old database.adp on the server drive when you update a new version.
Each user gets a copy of database.adp on their machine.
Remove Security warning when opening file from network share is here.
Batch File
#ECHO OFF
REM copy from network drive to local
xcopy "Your_Network_Drive\database.adp" "C:\User\database.adp" /Y /R /F
REM call your database file - Access 2007
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\MSAccess.EXE" "C:\User\database.adp"
This is a very old post and I used the autofeupdater until it stopped working so I wrote one of my own and it has evolved over the last few years into something that I have used with many clients. It's so simple to use and there is no interface. Just an EXE and a very simple config file.
Please check it out here. I can also help with custom solutions if none of the configurations work for your needs. http://www.dafran.ca/MS-Access-Front-End-Loader.aspx
After trying all of the solutions above (not exactly these solutions but these are the common suggestions in the Access community), I developed a system entirely within Access using VBA that allows an admin DB to create and publish objects to client DBs without the need for user intervention or management of multiple DB files.
This approach has several benefits:
1. It simplifies the development process by having a dedicated environment (admin DB) for development and testing totally separate from the client DBs.
2. It simplifies the update/distribution process by allowing a developer to push out updates in real time that client DBs can implement in the background, without involving users. Can also allow devs to roll back to previous versions if desired.
3. It could be used as a kind of change management system within Access for developers who want to commit multiple changes to objects and modules and retain past changes.
4. It allows for easier user access control by allowing an admin to easily assign certain objects to specific users/roles without needing to maintain multiple versions of the DB.
I will hopefully post the code to GitHub soon, I just have to get clearance from my workplace to release it. I will edit this post to include the link when I have.
We have usually kept the Access front ends on network drives, and just put up with the need to compact and repair on a regular basis. You will probably find you need to do that even when they are installed locally, anyway.
If you must have it installed locally, there are various tools which will enable you to "push out" software updates, and the guys over on ServerFault would have more information on those. Assuming such tools aren't available, the only other option I can think of is to write a small loader program that checks the local .MDB against a master copy on the server, and re-copies it across if they are different, before then launching the MDB.