Compatibility of Access 2000/Win XP application on Windows 98

[accessgoat]

Hi

I have an Access 2000 application created on Windows XP. I need to distribute this to clients running different versions of Windows from 98 to XP. Do this raise any version compatibility issues? Are Access XP applications compatible with Windows 98 or 2000 or NT?


Thank you
svenk.

 

[RickSpr]

I don't have any WinXP systems, but my Access 97 and Access 2000 applications generally run with no problem on systems from Win95 to Win2000.

It's much easier if your users already have Access 2000 installed (often as part of Office 2000). In that case, you can just give them a copy of the database, and possibly any non-built-in libraries you've put in your References.

Otherwise, you should really have a Developer Edition copy of Access, which includes the Package and Deployment Wizard. The wizard will build an installation package containing all the libraries you need to install with your database. It will also include the Access Run Time modules if you set up to do that--and you need to if any of your users doesn't have Access installed. By default, the Run Time modules aren't included. You need to read the Office Developer Edition Readme file to learn how to install the run time support for the PDW.

There are some things you might have done in your VBA code that won't work well running under the runtime-only modules. The most common of these is allowing unhandled errors to percolate up to the user interface, as opposed to trapping and handling them in your code. When running in the runtime-only environment, these will simply terminate the application without a message. The other things that don't work well, you probably haven't done anyway, if you wrote the application with the intention of distributing it.

If you don't have a Developer Edition, and your users don't have Access installed, I'm afraid it could be rough getting your distributed application to work. In fact, you probably can't do so legally, because your application depends on libraries which you're not licensed to redistribute.

Rick Sprague
Want the best answers? See faq181-2886
To write a program from scratch, first create the universe. - Paraphrased from Albert Einstein

 

[accessgoat]

Thank you so much. Your answer just cleared a big hurdle for me.

svenk.

 

[accessgoat]

Hi

Thanks for the response. Has anyone had conflicts with Access applications built on Windows XP, running on Windows 2000?

Thanks
svenk.