reading access files

[joe]

If I want to send an access database to someone who
doesn't have access loaded on their computer, is it
possible to view the tables? In other words, is there
some sort of default access reader that is available?

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Not really.

You can purchase the appropriate Developer edition (it goes by different
names: see what Tony Toews has at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/developereditionfaq.htm for details) and
package your application using it. That distributes a royalty-free run-time
version of Access that your users can install to run your application.
There's no other way (legally) to distribute the run-time, though.

However, if all they want is to get at the data that's contained in your
MDB, any ODBC-compliant client (Excel, Word, etc.) is capable of getting at
the data.