Home/ Questions/Q 6773757
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-26T15:42:20+00:00

I’m a MySQL user. I’ve never used either MSAccess or MSExcel, though Excel got

  • 0

I’m a MySQL user. I’ve never used either MSAccess or MSExcel, though Excel got installed the other day as part of MSOffice.

A customer asks me to incorporate MSAccess in his project. Is Excel an upgrade from Access? Or are they totally diff products? I see that I can download Access, but is it even supported anymore?

Cust gave me his database as a .mdb file, which Excel seems to know nothing about.

What’s my next step in getting this database file running on my XP machine?

Thanks, everybody!

EDIT: I had downloaded a trial copy of MSOffice 2010 Home, which includes Excel but does not include Access. To get Access I downloaded a 60-day trial of MSOffice 2010 Professional.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    They are two completely different products.

    Access is a database management application, with .mdb being the file based database structure.

    Excel is a spreadsheet program. And although people tend to use it as a database and as a word processor too, it really isn’t.

    In Access it is possible to link to external tables, as if they were tables in the database. Access allows linking to various other database formats, but also supports Excel spreadsheets. That may be the source of your confusion.

    Note that Access isn’t server based. Access is critisized a lot because it doesn’t scale so well. It is however a good and easy database to start with, and is very usable for small companies that just have a couple of PC’s in a workgroup and not a complete server.

    Access can be used in a multi-user fashion, but the ‘regular’ way of use is single user. Lots of people who do Access development try to have multiple single user connections to a database, which is really asking for trouble.
    Instead, you can create workgroups inside your Access database and use it in a true multi-user approach.
    Even though, I’d be reluctant to use Access in a multi-user environment, especially when you get to 5 users or more writing to the database. For read-only access, having more simultaneuous users isn’t a problem at all.

    Access itself does cost money, but that is the database management tool. The drivers are free, and you can create a database programmatically using only free tools, or you can use a single license to contruct the database and modify it from numerous PC’s that don’t have Access itself, but do have the free drivers.

    • 0