Access 97 to Access 2003

I am the part time network administrator for a small trucking company and
have developed about a dozen db's that are in daily use. The Front End
mde's are on the users workstations and the Back End on a 2003 server. I
use the FE-Updater to distribute updates, thank you it works great.

The workstations, Windows XP Pro, are upgrading to Office 2003 and I have
Office 2003 Professional with .Net Studio. I would like to end up with the
Access 2003 runtime on the workstations and have the db's updated to Access
2003. I haven't done anything with ASP pages, would this be a better
approach?

Do I have to update all of the FE's before distributing the runtime and
removing Access 97 from the workstations or can Access 97 and the runtime
for 2003 both be installed on the workstations at the same time?

Any other guidance eagerly accepted.

Thanks
Jim

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

You should be able to run Access 97 and the runtime on the workstations at
the same time. To open a database in a particular version you can open the
program first, then the database or create a shortcut to the database that
also specifies which version to open.

Example command line:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\msaccess.exe" "C:\My
Documents\MyFile.mdb" (and any command line switches that you may need)

To upgrade the MDEs, you'll have to upgrade the MDB file that they are made
from then make a new MDE. After the upgrade you'll need to make sure that
there is a Reference set to DAO in Tools|References in the VBA editor. Also,
amend the Dim statements for any DAO objects to avoid confusion with ADO
objects that have the same name.

Example:
Change
Dim rst As Recordset
to
Dim rst As DAO.Recordset

You should be able to do a find/replace (Ctrl+H). Search on As Recordset and
replace it with As DAO.Recordset. Do this for all DAO objects (database,
querydef, field, etc) for consistancy, although not all of these have an ADO
item with the same name.

--
Wayne Morgan
Microsoft Access MVP


"Jim Sloan" wrote in message
...
I am the part time network administrator for a small trucking company and
have developed about a dozen db's that are in daily use. The Front End
mde's are on the users workstations and the Back End on a 2003 server. I
use the FE-Updater to distribute updates, thank you it works great.

The workstations, Windows XP Pro, are upgrading to Office 2003 and I have
Office 2003 Professional with .Net Studio. I would like to end up with
the
Access 2003 runtime on the workstations and have the db's updated to
Access
2003. I haven't done anything with ASP pages, would this be a better
approach?

Do I have to update all of the FE's before distributing the runtime and
removing Access 97 from the workstations or can Access 97 and the runtime
for 2003 both be installed on the workstations at the same time?

Any other guidance eagerly accepted.

Thanks
Jim

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

"Jim Sloan" wrote:

I haven't done anything with ASP pages, would this be a better
approach?

Only if you want to spend 3 to 5 times longer creating the same app.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

"Jim Sloan" wrote:

I am the part time network administrator for a small trucking company and
have developed about a dozen db's that are in daily use. The Front End
mde's are on the users workstations and the Back End on a 2003 server. I
use the FE-Updater to distribute updates, thank you it works great.

Glad to hear it helps.

FWIW one of my improvements which I'm working on right now and hope to
get going in the next week or so is to have the Auto FE Updater look
at the file which you want to run and it will automatically choose
whatever version of Access is appropriate.

This should ease some of the distribution hassles.

Also what you can do is have the A97 FE in one directory on the server
and the A2003 FE in another directory along with two INI files. As
each user is upgraded you run the A2003 shortcut and it can bring down
the new copy. Leave the BE in A97 until all the users are upgraded.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm