Hello all,
I am nearing completion of an Access 2010 database that I have been working on for a long time. Ideally, I would like to split the DB and share it with multiple users at two or three different office locations (i.e. not on a local network, so a shared folder is not an option). My hope is to have the back-end securely hosted (somehow) and distribute my front-end application to my colleagues after having downloaded Access 2010 Runtime on each of their computers.
I cannot figure out what the best way to achieve this is. In fact, I honestly cannot even find one single option anywhere which can achieve this other than buying a server, which is unreasonably expensive/complicated for us at the present time. It seems to me like Office 365 could be option, but I cannot get a straight answer anywhere as to whether 365 can be used in conjunction with a "regular" Access database or if it must be a "web database" that is used with Access Services/Sharepoint. Most of Microsoft's help/explanations seem to indicate the latter, and since my DB is a "regular" database that is a real problem for me since it is not currently web compatible and would need serious structural changes to the tables to achieve that. I also don't need to run anything in a browser, which seems to be the main purpose of "web databases" such as I understand them.
I greatly appreciate any advice or help anyone can offer. Needless to say, after having spent so much effort developing this application and learning Access it would be deeply disappointing to arrive at a dead end now. Much thanks in advance.