How to Publishing Access Forms

AGx-07_162

Honorable
Sep 16, 2013
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10,610
Not sure how complicated this might be but here goes:

I have a small MS Access database that I've built some queries and forms in. What I need to do now is "publish" it in a way that the users can access the forms but not be able to modify them, queries, or tables.

I know this can be done (and maybe I'm explaining it poorly) because I actually have one that I've been using but it sucks so I'm working on something better (by sucks I mean the database design is terrible).

How can I do this? I have Access 2010. The DB is in the .accdb format currently but its small enough that I can easily remake it in another format and import the data from SQL Server again if necessary.

Thanks in advance.
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator
Using Access, ideally this is done by splitting the functions.

Frontend and backend

Backend lives on a common server that everyone has access to, the frontends live on the users workstations.
Backend contains the tables/data. Forntends contain the brains. Forms, reports, etc.

That is the recommended way, and I have used that for an Access application distributed from Los Angeles to Chicago to Paris.
 

AGx-07_162

Honorable
Sep 16, 2013
58
0
10,610


Not immediately no.
What we have is something that looks like THIS that we use to search for contacts in the database. Its functional but I dislike the layout, the data is really really bad, and we have about four of these to access different databases that all contain data that could just be in one. So in addition to cleaning up as much of the data as I can tolerate, I'm condensing.

I don't need this exact layout but I don't know much about using Access other than manipulating data (which I do in SQL Server anyway and just move back into access). So I'd like to make something like this, where all the user gets is a search button and the results. I'm just not sure how to build that. I've messed around with forms but that just seems to bring my results back in query windows. Fine for me but not suitable for end-users since they'd have to constantly close the results and then go back to the form.

If someone can point me in the right direction I can research but I'm having a hard time even lookign for what I want as I'm not really sure how to word what I want for a search.