Building an Access Runtime App (AXP / Win2K)

[santosm]

Hello All,
I am building an Access application that must be able to run on a users machine even if they don't have office installed. I understand something about Access runtime. Is there anything else I should be looking for when setting this up? I also read some posts here about the packager not being that good and I should run something like install shield. Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Mark Santos

[MarkLiquorman]

You wrote:
>>I understand something about Access runtime. <<

From this, I'm not sure how much you know about the Access runtime. So I'll cover it again just to be sure. If you purchase the Office Developer Edition, it contains a copy of the Access runtime, which you can legally distribute royalty free. In also includes the Setup Wizard, which enables you to create an installation CD (or diskettes in Access97). You can use an 3rd party installer instead. I've used the Access97 installer with few problems, but it is in controlled circumstances, so it is probably not a valid test.

Aside from not being able to create/modify forms/reports when using the runtime, there are also some other differences in capabilities that you need to be aware of. There are a couple of MSKB articles that detail this, include Q162521 (Differences between retail and run-time versions of Access) and Q173796 (Print Command no available in Run-time applications). With the developer edition, you can start Access with the /runtime command line parameter, which will enable you simulate how your application will be seen by a run-time user.

[santosm]

Thanks Mark,
I will study this some more. The app will not require that the user do anything other then fill in data, etc. They will have to print so i will have to figure a way around that one.

Thanks,
Mark

[MarkLiquorman]

They can still print, just don't assume that same print options you see on your machine will be on the runtime machine. For example, if you open a report on your machine in Print Preview, from your menu bar, you can select "File" and have choices of to print it, page setup, etc. Well, on a runtime machine, these choices aren't there! You will have to setup a special menu or toolbar if you want to give users these capabilities from Preview mode. That's why you you should open your database using the /runtime option on your machine to see how differently things look. (although, this is not 100% accurate).

[santosm]

Thanks again. I will definitely run it in /runtime mode to see how things work. They will basically only need to print a copy of a report so hopefully this can handle that.

Thanks,
Mark