How to develop applications using Access and deploy them as standalone applications.
Q: Kamlesh Chand wants to develop applications using MS Access and deploy them as standalone applications (i.e., applications that can be run on machines that do not have MS Access installed on them). How can this be done?
A: If you have the Developer Edition of Office, you can use the developer tools to prepare distributed Access applications. Several years ago, I wrote a pair of Access Archon articles on this topic: Access Archon #68 describes creating a distributed application in Access 97, using the ODE (Office Developer Environment) Setup Wizard, while Access Archon #69 describes creating a distributed application in Access 2000, using the Package and Deployment Wizard. (Also see Access Archon #70, Troubleshooting Distributed Applications). My book Access 2002 Inside-Out describes using the Package and Deployment Wizard in the Developer edition of Office XP. So far, I haven’t gotten around to trying (or writing up) the very different tools for preparing a distributed Access application using the VB .NET utilities for Office 2003 (more or less a replacement for the Developer edition for previous Office versions).
