Some advice needed please about Access transfer to a new computer

[tbjmobile@gmail.com]

Hi Everyone,
I need some help please. I bought Access 2016 in 2017 only to get together a program for my daughter's business and it has been working well for her since then. The laptop that I handed over to her with the program on, already a couple of years old then, is now close to death. So I need to do something quickly. I looked at my purchase records on the M/S accounts site and sure enough it's still there with the licence and an 'Install' link. My daughter also has Access as a part of Office by subscription, but we can't get the data to open in this. So I have to buy another laptop. But if I try an install onto my laptop, just to confirm it will work, can I then install it also on a new laptop for her a few days later?
Any help and/or advice would be greatly appreciated, including if anyone thinks I would be better served posting this on a different Microsoft site or forum.


Thanks in advance.

[Welshgasman]

You could always use the access runtime as a test?
Is your daughters access the same bitness as yours?

[tbjmobile@gmail.com]

Thank you Welshgasman for your reply (love your handle)!
I've seen reference to runtime but don't actually know what it is, is it a separate app?
Do you mean business when you say bitness, otherwise again, I'm not familiar.
What happened was that my daughter carried on with my business when I retired and I made this program to make life easier for her, I don't know if this helps.
Regards,
Trevor.

[Micron]

we can't get the data to open in this.

Not sure what that means. Maybe a solution that would work for you would be a 365 subscription so that you and 4 or 5 other family members can use whatever you sign up for. I don't know a whole lot about how M$ deals with application purchases but I suspect that when you purchase they equate something (e.g. your hard drive serial number) with that so you can't share. If you have to change the device to another, perhaps they can equate the purchase to another device (whatever your daughter is using) but you would lose access to the product. A 365 subscription would allow you both (and I think 3 others) to use the apps that comes with Office, but also Access because that's what you would have signed up for.

[Welshgasman]

Thank you Welshgasman for your reply (love your handle)!
I've seen reference to runtime but don't actually know what it is, is it a separate app?
Do you mean business when you say bitness, otherwise again, I'm not familiar.
What happened was that my daughter carried on with my business when I retired and I made this program to make life easier for her, I don't know if this helps.
Regards,
Trevor.

No, the runtime is a free program that allows a user to run an access db without the actual Access program. I have never used it myself, just know it exists.
No bitness is whether the Access program is 32 or 64 bit. Access used to be 32bit, but now there is a 64 bit version and I believe that installs by default. They are not compatible if you use certain features. Do not confuse this with 64bit Windows, nothing to do with it.

If all else fails you can get a fully registered copy of Office for not a lot of money. I actually bit the bullet and upgraded from 2007 to 2019, though I am hating the Outlook in this version. :-(
I only did it so as to be able to open later version of Access DBs. I was more than happy with Word, Excel and Outlook in 2007.

I have just installed mine again and it reregistered without any issues.

[tbjmobile@gmail.com]

Not sure what that means. Maybe a solution that would work for you would be a 365 subscription so that you and 4 or 5 other family members can use whatever you sign up for. I don't know a whole lot about how M$ deals with application purchases but I suspect that when you purchase they equate something (e.g. your hard drive serial number) with that so you can't share. If you have to change the device to another, perhaps they can equate the purchase to another device (whatever your daughter is using) but you would lose access to the product. A 365 subscription would allow you both (and I think 3 others) to use the apps that comes with Office, but also Access because that's what you would have signed up for.

Thank you for your reply, Sorry for any confusion. To clarify - Laura always made a usb backup after doing any work on the db so what I meant was that although she has a current subscribed 365, the backup won't open in it.

I don't use Access any more but thinking back, I think that the problem may be that access won't open a file on a usb, so I have asked her to try it by copying it to her hard drive from the usb stick first.

So thanks for your suggestions, they make sense to me. Wil wait and see what she comes back with !
Trevor.

[tbjmobile@gmail.com]

Thanks again Welshgasman. I found runtime and downloaded it but I couldn't find Access anywhere in it. Thanks for the explanation of what bitness refers to, I understand. I will try to find out what bitness her access is because I noticed that I can download 2 versions of runtime. Then I'll try again. I have no idea why I couln't find Access in runtime, maybe it's because I don't have Access on this (my) laptop !

[Micron]

Runtime is for users who don't have a license for full blown Access. It's not "in" Access or Office AFAIK, it's a separate thing.
Do NOT work on files on a usb drive - the potential for corrupting the file is too great to risk it.

[June7]

AFAIK, you don't "find" runtime, you just open the Access db file - after making a copy and changing the file extension to accdr. I am assuming your daughter's db is all-in-one, not split design.

If db is split design, it is more complicated to move to different machine.

An all-in-one db can open from USB stick. I have not experienced corruption doing this but I don't do it often. Again, split db gets complicated but really should split db, especially if you want to run copies with runtime and still be able to edit and distribute the GUI part.

[Micron]

Corruption happened to someone I know. Here's a quote from a well known developer

However we are seeing the occasional corruption postings in the
newsgroups or the occasional losing of the complete flash drive so I
share your concerns there.

Tony
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP

Some say it could be because of the lifetime limit on writing to sectors on a flash drive. Whatever the reason, it makes no sense to me to take the risk. If you need a pc to plug the stick into, why not just copy it to the hard drive, work on it there, and copy your changes back to the stick?

[Welshgasman]

Corruption happened to someone I know. Here's a quote from a well known developer

Some say it could be because of the lifetime limit on writing to sectors on a flash drive. Whatever the reason, it makes no sense to me to take the risk. If you need a pc to plug the stick into, why not just copy it to the hard drive, work on it there, and copy your changes back to the stick?

Has to be faster as well when on the hard disk, even with USB3 ?

[tbjmobile@gmail.com]

Thank you all for your help, taking all the advice on board, I decided to bite the bullet and download and install Access 2016 from my Microsoft account onto my laptop, and if we bought a new laptop, I would have it and give mine to my daighter. My machine is W11 but I don't suppose that matters as all new ones are anyway. However, although the programme opens and all the data is there, there are one od two warnings and the macros seem to be missing which is the same as experienced with runtime. There is also 'F11' missing which was to get a list of all the objects on the left of the screen, I don't remember if this is standard or a shortcut that I made. I had a choice of downloads so I chose the 32bit version which is what the old one is, there was also the 64bit version and 'default'. I suppose I'll have to get out the thick Access bible book that I had and try to fix these problems. It won't be easy I'm 75 now and did this 7 years ago. So do you think I would have been better with the default version?
Thanks to all again.

[Welshgasman]

You would need to allow macroes and possibly trust the location of the db?
Is it confidential?, you could upload to here? Compact and zip if large.

[Micron]

Did you copy the db file from somewhere to where it is now, or is it in the same place and you simply installed a version of Access? If yes to the former, I also would check that the location of the file is a Trusted Location.

[June7]

Stick with 32-bit Access.