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    We are trying to share a Microsoft Access database between two offices in different Cities.  We have recently changed from an Excel sheet that we stored on Office Live.  Office Live does not support Database applications.  The file is slightly smaller than 50mb now but will grow to larger than 50mb very soon.  Would like to store data at a hosted website with ability for each office to open, edit, develop and print reports locally and to save a copy on each computer to use off-line as reference, updating the main file only weekly or so.  Having trouble figuring out best solution with these applications or whether another solution would better serve our needs.

    Thanks for any assistance.

    Thursday, May 6, 2010 12:04 PM

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    I think that you should post this question in the Office forums on Answers.
    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/threads

    You certainly don't want to use a sync solution such as Mesh or Sync as these will both attempt to replicate the file to all computers that are part of the Mesh or Sync folder and you'll encounter conflicts continually. You need to merge the data from multiple locations, so you don't want a single database that gets copied between locations.

    You could, however, utilize a service like SkyDrive to host your master database file that can be manually downloaded to each site and perhaps another folder for the "local" database that will need to be merged into the master periodically.

    There may well be more elegant solutions, but I can be fairly certain that Live Mesh and Live Sync are not going to be part of the best solution due to the conflicts that will arise.

    -steve

    ~ Microsoft MVP Windows Live ~ Windows Live OneCare| Live Mesh|MS Security Essentials Forums Moderator ~
    Thursday, May 6, 2010 12:52 PM
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    I think that you should post this question in the Office forums on Answers.
    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/threads

    You certainly don't want to use a sync solution such as Mesh or Sync as these will both attempt to replicate the file to all computers that are part of the Mesh or Sync folder and you'll encounter conflicts continually. You need to merge the data from multiple locations, so you don't want a single database that gets copied between locations.

    You could, however, utilize a service like SkyDrive to host your master database file that can be manually downloaded to each site and perhaps another folder for the "local" database that will need to be merged into the master periodically.

    There may well be more elegant solutions, but I can be fairly certain that Live Mesh and Live Sync are not going to be part of the best solution due to the conflicts that will arise.

    -steve

    ~ Microsoft MVP Windows Live ~ Windows Live OneCare| Live Mesh|MS Security Essentials Forums Moderator ~
    Thursday, May 6, 2010 12:52 PM
    Moderator
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    Would like to store data at a hosted website with ability for each office to open, edit, develop and print reports locally and to save a copy on each computer to use off-line as reference, updating the main file only weekly or so.


    You might also consider a Windows Home Server that would allow remote offices to access such a database file.

    I'd also consider a SQL Server that could host the data in one place.  Access users (and even Excel users possibly) could interact with it as a data source.  Plus, you could have web applications developed to provide reports and create, read, update, delete functionality.

    "We're all in it together, kid." - Harry Tuttle, Heating Engineer
    Tuesday, May 18, 2010 5:23 PM