Access 2016 Runtime / Access 2013 Install Option with Office 365

Question

After testing Office 2016 I have a big Problem: 

I can not find a way to get back to Office / Access 2013 in order to use the free 2013 Access Runtime again. 

• Is there a way to install Office 2013 with Office 365 ? 
• When will there be an Access 2016 Runtime ? 

Thanks 

Answer 1

Well, not that this would help: Running two different Office versions in parallel may result in problems.. Also you cannot install ART on the same system where a full version of Access is installed.

For test use Hyper-V (Win8+) or Virtual PC (Win7).

Now you need to clean your system. Reverting to the system restore point before you have installed Office 2016 is imho the best solution, when you don't have installed any other software.

Answer 2

So, an interesting aspect of Access 2016 is that the Access object model has not changed from Access 2013. This means that it is possible to build an Access app in either version and deploy it interchangeably to users with mixed desktops. I have an app that I am building in Access 2016 right now that is being deployed and tested successfully on the Access 2013 runtime.

The one caveat to this is that if your Access application contains references to other Office products, such as Excel, your references will break and will have to be modified when moving between Office versions. 

Answer 3

Thanks for your replies.

I am already running in virtual environments to minimise side effects of multiple versions. But I currently miss the possibility to install Access 2013 with my Office 365 subscription. The option for a previous version is available on my MAC, but not on my PC environments. 

I also did try to run the Access 2016 project in Access 2013 Runtime.

The problem is that the project compiled in Access 2016 did not find MSO.DLL when running in Runtime 2013 . I am not using any reference to a different Office product.

MSO.DLL is as far as I know the Microsoft Object Library also used by Access and VBA. In Access 2016 it has version number 16 whereas Access 2013 used version 15.  

Answer 4

I've found same issue: saving my file with Access 2016, the reference to "Microsoft Office 15.0 Object Model" gets updated to version 16.0, and Access 2013 Runtime PCs cannot run macros anymore.

Any news on this issue?

Thanks

Answer 5

I had a similar concern, although not because of Access but because Outlook 2016 is not compatible with Exchange 2007 (which for now is our on-site email server). I contacted MS support through my Office 365 portal and they were very helpful. They emailed me a link to download the Office 2013 installation package and I was able to uninstall 2016 and reinstall 2013. You just can't do it through the O365 portal as they only offer 2016 there.

Hope this helps. I would post the link, but not sure if that is allowed, and it may be specific to the version of O365 that we purchased.

Cheers!