Access installer (XP developer)

**EstradaLu** · 2004-03-19 20:48

Does anybody know any good installer application that works well to distribute Access apps. I want something that works better than the packaging wizard that comes with the developer tools.

**HansV** · 2004-03-19 20:53

Both Wise Installer and InstallShield (InstallShield Express) are good.

**EstradaLu** · 2004-03-19 21:15

Thanks, however, can any of these handle the problems with including the runtime for the pc's that have no Access installed?

**charlotte** · 2004-03-19 23:51

Those installers build setup packages that are considerably more robust that the Microsoft wizard. If you have the developer edition, then you have the runtime files and creating a build with Wise or InstallShield will include them, according to your instructions. I'm not sure what you mean by "problems".

**TheGry** · 2004-03-20 01:13

G'day

Actually I was just about to post on this. Is there an Office 2003 Developer pack? I can't seem to find it anywhere. How do you distribute runtimes of access 2003 applications? Where do you get the runtime files from ?

Ken

**HansV** · 2004-03-20 01:25

There is no Developer Edition of Office 2003; instead, there are Visual Studio Tools for Office. See <post#=303809>post 303809</post#>.

**TheGry** · 2004-03-20 02:18

Thanks Hans.

**EstradaLu** · 2004-03-20 19:27

Thanks for the info Charlotte, what I meant by problems is that it seems that if Access is already installed on the client PC, there could be some conflicts between the runtime version that the installer is installing and what is already on the PC. However, I have never done any access runtime installation; therefore, I do not know for sure. What I would like the installer to do is to determine what version, if any of Access is installed on the client PC, and base on that select the appropriate version of my application (Access 97, 2000, XP) or the runtime version and install accordingly.

**charlotte** · 2004-03-22 02:21

I think you should settle for having the user select the appropriate version. What had you planned to do if they had no Access installed or had several versions? However, I don't understand why you would want to select a version of the application based on their already installed version of Access. In that case, there would be little reason to distribute a runtime at all.

We distribute runtime versions of all our commercial applications to insure that the client's installation works exactly the way our development versions do. We use Wise Installer and SageKey scripts and we customize the scripts for each product and each version. We install the runtime in its own folder, so there is no conflict with any installed version of Access. We create shortcuts to open our application, and those shortcuts call the runtime version of Access, so we don't have to worry about the installed version.

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