can it be done in access?

[sam]

I have an excel sheet that is edited, updated by two other people as well.
Now in excel only one person can edit at a time which wastes a lot of time.
So I was looking for something that can be edited, updated by multiple people.

ALso I want it to be password protected. Where only myself and one more
person can edit and others will have a view permission only.

Do you know if this is possible in Access? Also in future I want to create
some forms that will help me input the data in database and where certain
fields will be mandatory. the input in these forms will populate the
corresponding cells in the table in access database.

I hope I made it clear.

Thanks in Advance.

 

[Jerry Whittle]

Yes. A well designed Access database can handle 20 people or more at a time.
You may run into some problems if two or more people attempt to modifiy the
same record at the same time.

For your needs, you'll need to implement user-level security which is a lot
of work to do what you want. Note: The new Access 2007 accdb file structure
does not support user-level security. The older .mdb file does. If you can
trust everyone who uses the database to create and edit records, a simple
password protected database is a lot easier.

 

[John Spencer MVP]

Yes, it everything you want can be done in Access.

You can implement security in a variety of ways.
-- If you want to you can distribute two versions of your application. One
for the three people that will do data entry and a second version that will
only allow people to see the data (with sorting and filtering capability).
-- Use "security lite" approach where you ask the user to login with a userid
and password that is stored in a table. This is more of an access control
than security. When you have the person's identity you can control through
VBA which forms he can see and which things he can do.
-- With Access Security you can create logins that are harder to get around
and use the identity to control which tables, forms, reports, etc can be seen,
written to, edited, deleted, etc. HOWEVER, implementing Access Security is
very complex and should not be undertaken without a lot of research.

You definitely do want to use forms for input and viewing data. You use
reports for printing data. Your users should not see the tables or queries
directly, but only through forms and reports.

Mandatory fields are easy and can be controlled by setting the required
property of the field in a table to Yes (True).

Access has a fairly steep learning curve, but it is fairly powerful.

John Spencer
Access MVP 2002-2005, 2007-2009
The Hilltop Institute
University of Maryland Baltimore County

 

[sam]

Thanks a Ton Jerry,

my concern is basically updating the sheet and sharing it with other
ppl(without them having edit permissions)

will splitting the database allow two people edit the sheet at the same time?
will they be updating different tables with different fields once I split
the database?

Thanks in advance

 

[sam]

Thanks a Lot John,

you said Mandatory fields are easy and can be controlled by setting the
required
property of the field in a table to Yes (True).

How can i do this? Is it done through Form or the sheet?

Thanks in advance.

 

[John Spencer MVP]

-- Open the table in design view
-- Select the field
-- Set its required property (at the bottom of the window) to Yes
-- Close the table and save the change

Now whenever a record is created or updated the field must get a value.

John Spencer
Access MVP 2002-2005, 2007-2009
The Hilltop Institute
University of Maryland Baltimore County