John and Pieter,

Thanks for the tip. Is Replication stable? The last time attemtpted to
use it was 8 years ago. At that time it seem like a pain-in-the-butt...in
the end, we ended up using Terminal Services. Unfortunately, I don't have
that option at the moment.
I'll check on David Fenton in the group you listed below.

Thank you.


"John W. Vinson" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 26 May 2010 14:41:47 -0400, "Thomas Kroljic"
wrote:

Hello,

My boss would like to have several of his field employees (9) have an
Access application
on there laptop/netbook device so when they visit customers, they can
input data
into the database. They will not have access to the internet or any
type
of
Remote connection. This will be a stand-alone Access application on
their
laptop. ( Field person will meet with 10 customer a day.)

My two questions have to do with when the field employees come back
into
the office.
What will be the best way to a) get data from their version of the
database on their
laptop into the Office database?
a) Should I user Replication Manager
or
b) would it be easier in the long run to write (vba)
code to move the data between the
laptop database and the Office database? If this
is
the route to take, how
would I connect (using vba code) from the Field
version of the database
to the Office version?
or
c) export the appropriate data to a separate file?

For some reason, I'm thinking if I can steer clear of the Replication
Manager, I'll have fewer headaches. Is this true?

And my second question would have to do with any changes that I would need
to make to the data structure. How do I update the Field databases? Again,
would it be better to write the vba code to modify the data sturctures
instead of using Replication Manager?

I would VERY strongly urge that you a) split the database into a frontend
and
backend (backend containing only tables), and give each employee their own
copy of the frontend; and b) use the Replication Manager to replicate the
backend (NOT the frontend!!!), and give each remote employee a member of
the
replica set of the backend. The replica master must remain on the central
office server (and should not be used by anyone except the administrator).
Central office users would share a common backend, itself a member of the
replica set; when remote users come in they can connect to the network and
synchronize their replicas with this "sub-master" (and thereby with the
master).

David Fenton is one of the current gurus on replication, try a
http://groups.google.com advanced search of these groups using
"replication"
and "fenton" as search terms.

--

John W. Vinson [MVP]