Set UNC path for linked table? 1

[Darrylles]

Hi all,

Believe it or not, the organization that I work for is allowing and even specifying different drive letter mappings for individual shared drives.

This I am addressing, but the size of the organization makes changing things very slow, and the MS Access application that I'm developing is currently in use.

My problem is that the app. has links to external databases, and Access seems to store the path with the drive letter. So user a) may have TableA linked via P:/thisfolder/thatfolder/db.table, and user b) needs N:/thisfolder/thatfolder/db.table (to the same table in the same folder in the same database).

I can acquire the current users app. path via CurrentDB(), and relink the tables at runtime, but I'm not sure if this will affect users currently logged-in to the app.
For e.g. user a) opens the app, and a linked table is mapped to P:/thisfolder/thatfolder/db.table, user b) opens the app, and his/her 'instance' of the app. deletes the link and remaps it to N:/thisfolder/thatfolder/db.table.

Will this affect user a) at all, or is the second users copy of the app. really a second instance of the app?

If this will affect user a); is there some way to convert the path returned by CurrentDB to UNC? I don't want to have to specify literal UNC paths if at all avoidable.

Any help much appreciated.

Regards,

Darrylle


Never argue with an idiot, he'll bring you down to his level - then beat you with experience.

 

[oharab]

If you have the front ends on the local machine (which is best practice and the thing you really ought to be doing) then changing the links will not affect anyone else, however if everyone is using a copy stored on the central drive (which is bad m'kay) then any changes you make to the mdb will affect every user reading that file.
The best way is to link the back end tables to the front end using full UNC paths, then run the front end locally on the user's machine. THis will improve stability and performance, and keep your admin to a minimum.

To answer your other question, a quick google ([google]vb convert mapped folder unc[/google]) gave me

http://vb.mvps.org/articles/ap200001.asp

with a function to return a mapped drive's UNC path.

hth

Ben

----------------------------------------------
Ben O'Hara

http://www.RobotParade.co.uk

We could be confused in exactly the same way, but confusion might be like Nulls, and not comparable.