Multi users on one system and Access
April 14, 2010 11:14 AM   Subscribe

I posted a previous question about fixing permissions on an Access/PostGreSQL d/b I use at work. Now what I'm attempting to do is enable using Access with multiple users on the same machine.

My company is using Office 97 Access to interact with our PostGreSQL d/b. On my workstation, I've locked down my WinXP user login with a password. Because I work in a showroom, it would be helpful if other users could also access the d/b, but I don't want people on my user login at all. I've set up a second user with limited privileges but cannot seem to get the d/b to work for them.
It seemed to me that when I had the second user as an administrator I was able to launch the Access d/b simultaneously on both logins. I've since changed the second user to 'limited' status as I don't want anyone on this machine with admin privileges except me and IT.
I've tried things like opening the permissions on the Access folder with the file that launches the d/b, moving the folder to Shared Documents, and creating two copies of the Access folder. It appears that Access doesn't want to run the same data set simultaneously or something to that effect. It errors and will not run the second launch.
posted by diode to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)
 
What error message do you receive when it "will not run the second launch"?

I've had success with multiple users running Access against a PostgreSQL database before. It sounds like you've already narrowed it down to something Access-specific though.

What are the NTFS permissions on the Access database itself?

Is the limited user able to open the database when the administrator account doesn't have it open?
posted by vsync at 12:40 PM on April 14, 2010


I would think you'd get a locked-file error when the second person tries to run the .mdb.
posted by rhizome at 2:52 PM on April 14, 2010


Response by poster: Yes, that's it, locked file error.
posted by diode at 5:56 PM on April 14, 2010


Yeah, Access doesn't like its files being shared simultaneously. The hard solution would be to create a new multiuser interface for the database using something besides Access, likely web-based. The easy solution is to create a copy of the MDB for each user and put it in their home directory so that each person has their own. This becomes a bit of an administrative drag if you update the MDB, but you can create a batch file to do the copy-blast whenever that crops up. The users should not be allowed to change the MDB in this case, however, since their changes would be overwritten upon update.
posted by rhizome at 10:46 AM on April 15, 2010


Response by poster: Okay, I think I've been trying to do just that, create multiple copies of the MDB, so perhaps I need to go try it again and see if it works.
posted by diode at 8:59 PM on April 15, 2010


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