Sharing an Access database with people in other places

Last updated 28 September 2026.

I have designed a Microsoft Access database and it’s working fine. The major challenge is how to get users to use the database remotely, at different locations.

That question turns up on Microsoft’s own forum every few weeks. The short answer is that Access was built for people on one office network, and every way of stretching it further means putting something else in the middle.

Why the file will not just travel

An Access database is a file. When several people use it, each of them has that file open across the network at the same time, and Access keeps them apart with a lock file beside it. On an office network that works. Over the internet it is slow, and a dropped connection in the middle of a write can leave the file damaged.

OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive are not an answer. The experts on Microsoft’s forum say so plainly: they do not handle an open Access file properly, and if two people open it you can end up with two copies that each hold half the week’s work.

The three answers you will be given

1. Move the tables to SQL Server. Split the database, put the tables in SQL Server or Azure SQL, and give each person a copy of the Access front end that connects to it over the internet. This keeps your forms and your VBA. It costs a server, someone to look after it, and work on any query that was slow over a network already.
2. Remote Desktop. Run Access on one machine in the office, or in Azure Virtual Desktop, and let people log in to it. Only the screen travels, so the file stays safe. It costs licences, a server sized for everyone at once, and it stops the moment someone’s connection does.
3. Rebuild in Power Apps. A web app over Dataverse or SharePoint, with multi-user editing built in. It costs a rebuild of every form, query and report, and it is priced per person.

All three are real and all three work. If you have VBA you cannot live without, the first one is probably yours, and the rest of this page will not change that.

What all three have in common

Each one keeps a single copy of the data in one place and makes everybody reach it. So each one needs a connection, all the time, for everybody. Someone in a van, a church hall or a site office with one bar of signal is either working on paper or not working.

A fourth shape: every person keeps a copy

The other way round is that each person’s computer holds its own full copy of the records, and the copies sync. You work on your copy, with or without a connection. When you are online, your changes go up and everyone else’s come down, and the one shared copy is the sum of everybody’s work.

That is how Bionic Forms works. There is a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux that keeps an encrypted copy of your database on the machine and works with no connection at all. There is also a browser version for anyone who does not want to install anything, which does need a connection.

If two people change the same record while they were apart, neither change is thrown away. The record is marked, both versions are shown side by side, and a person decides which one is right.

Moving across is a file, not a rebuild. Export your Access tables to CSV or Excel and drop them in, one file after another and in any order. The tables become collections, the columns become typed fields, and a column that names another table’s records becomes a link.

Where this is honest

• There is no VBA. Automation is a fixed catalogue written as sentences (“when a job is marked done, email the customer”). If your database earns its keep through years of tuned code, that logic has nowhere to go here, and we say so at length.
• Offline is the desktop app, not phones. There is no iPhone or Android app yet. On a phone you use the browser, and the browser needs a connection.
• We are pre-launch. Billing works and the product works, and we are honest about the parts that are not finished.
• The price is not per person. Free covers unlimited apps and 10,000 entries per app. Business is $29 a month for the whole team, with unlimited users.