deploying same accde with Access runtime to mixed Office 2007 + 2010 environment

Question

I'm upgrading an Access 2003 application to run with about 30 users who are running Office 2007 or Office 2010. I'd like to do this in the easiest to maintain configuration I can. There are several updates to the accde made each month, then distributed to all users when they log in every day by just copying the latest .accde

I've removed Access 2003 and installed Access 2010 runtime on all my Office 2010 users and that seems to work fine (as I expected it would). I removed Access 2003 and installed the Access 2010 runtime on my first two Office 2007 users and have run into a couple of issues. So I'm wondering if I should have them running Access 2007 runtime instead of Access 2010, and whether or not I have to build the .accde files separately, one with each version of Access, etc. Or can I make one .accde that will run on both Access 2007 and Access 2010 runtime.

Part of my application uses spell check. That works properly in Access 2010 with Office 2010 installed. But when I run the spell check command from Access 2010 on a computer with Office 2007 I get an error message than "spell check is not installed". I tried using my AutoCorrect definitions, and surprisingly, those work whether I'm using Office 2007 or Office 2010. So I'm not sure why one of these appears to depend on having the same version of Office installed and the other one doesn't.

The ribbons I created that work with Access 2010 don't load when I open the .accde (or the .accdb for that matter) using Access 2007. Is there a minor reference change I can make to the ribbon.xml file that will make most of it work with Access 2007? Should I make that change, then run the 2007 ribbon with Access 2010?

If anyone has any experience with these issues I would appreciate your comments.

Answer 1

Since users all have a version of Access I would not use Runtime at all. I would develope to the lowest version of Access on the Machines and send everyone the same version as .accde.

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Chris Ward

Answer 2

Sorry, my post was ambiguous. No one has a full copy of Access. They have been running runtime copies of Access 2003. I'm upgrading to runtime copies of Access 2007 and/or 2010. I was just hoping that I could develop in either 2007 or 2010 and distribute to everyone.

Answer 3

Unless you want multiple copies of the FE's then you need to develope in a single version of Access. If you will give Runtime A2007 to some then all  should be developed in A2007.

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Chris Ward

Answer 4

I want to stay with Access 2010, if possible. The problem is using Access 2010 with Office 2007 leaves out the Office Tools.

I found that the  freely downloadable Microsoft Sharepoint Designer has the spell checker & other 2010 Tools in it that aren't in the Access 2010 runtime. Now that I have it installed, spell checker works from Access 2010 with only the runtime installed. So maybe that's all it takes. I have some additional testing to do, but so far so good.

Answer 5

Hi Gordon,

It seems that you have solved the problem.

Please feel free to let us know if you need any help.

Good day.

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Yoyo Jiang[MSFT]
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