Import Access data from a database on a read-only server

[rmmhie]

Hi guys, any quick help is greatly appreciated.

There is an Access database on a network drive. I have an Excel sheet on my local PC. This Excel sheet has a import & linked table from the database.

Its set to read-only. Any changes in the database reflect in Excel, and if I edit the Excel data, nothing happens to the original data in Access.

Now this works great for me because I have full privileges to that network drive.

I sent the Excel file to someone who has no privileges to the network drive. Now the table wont update. So, we gave the user "read-only" privileges and now we get an error "cannot lock file".

The error only goes away if the user has full read/write privileges to the drive.

Anyway around this?

 

[SydneyGeek]

Unfortunately, no.
The reason is that when you launch Access, a 1kb locking database (same name, but with an .ldb extension) is created in the directory housing the database.
If you don't have read/write access to the directory, you can't create the .ldb and Access returns the error you described, and won't open.
You will need instead to limit the user's access via permissions in the database.

Denis

 

[rmmhie]

Thank you for th reply Sir.

I was aware of the locking file. Thats why the user would need read/write permission on the directory. I was worried that someone would delete my database. Today I found out the "read-write" only means that people can access the database and make changes to it. To delete the actual file they must have "modify" privilages. My database is passpord protected and no one can open it so I am safe. And since no one can delete it I am satisfied. I have changed the folder permissions to read-write for those users who will need access to it.


However, now I am having problems with locking cells in the Excel sheet. I will be posting a new thread.