Using an Access database offline, then syncing it back

Last updated 28 September 2026.

Is there a way to truly run my Access database offline, and to synchronize with the back end tables upon re-connection?

Somebody asks this on Microsoft’s forum every few months. Usually it is people who collect data in the field all day, with no signal, and bring it back to the office at night. The honest answer is that Access used to do this, and does not any more.

What happened to replication

Older Access databases (the .mdb kind) could be replicated. Each laptop held a replica, and the replicas were merged when they met again. The newer .accdb format never supported it, and Microsoft’s list of what changed in Access 2013 puts it in one line: “Support for replication is fully removed from Access 2013.”

Nothing replaced it inside Access. So the question now has to be answered with something else.

The answers you will be given

1. Move the tables to SharePoint lists. Access can keep working with them while you are away and sync when you are back. It is the cheapest answer and needs the least code. The experts who suggest it also give the limits: keep ordinary AutoNumber keys, and watch the 5,000-row mark, past which SharePoint gets much harder to work with.
2. Put SQL Server Express on every laptop. Each laptop runs its own copy of SQL Server and replicates with a central one in the office or in Azure. This is the grown-up version of what Access used to do. It costs a SQL Server install on every machine and somebody who knows how to look after replication.
3. Write the sync yourself. Copy the tables you need into local ones, cut the links, work, then run code that pushes the changes back. One of the answers on the forum calls this “not trivial” and says it needs an experienced database developer. That is fair.

The part that bites everyone: AutoNumber

An AutoNumber counts 1, 2, 3 on each copy. Two laptops out in the field both create record number 58, and when they come back, one of them is not going in. Every home-made sync has to solve this, usually by giving each laptop its own range of numbers or by adding the person’s ID to the key. It is also why a simple copy-and-merge falls apart as soon as records point at each other: the order that belongs to customer 58 now belongs to the wrong customer.

A tool built to work this way

Bionic Forms starts from the other end. The desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux keeps a full, encrypted copy of your database on the machine and works with no connection at all. When you are online again, your changes go up and everyone else’s come down. There is no sync step to run and no code to write.

Every record gets a random ID the moment it is created, on whichever machine created it, so two laptops can never hand out the same one. Links between records use those IDs, so an order stays with its customer however the copies meet.

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 after another 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

• Offline means a laptop or desktop. There is no iPhone or Android app yet. On a phone you use the browser, and the browser needs a connection. If your people collect data on phones, this does not solve it today.
• There is no VBA. Automation is a fixed catalogue written as sentences (“when a job is marked done, email the customer”). If your database runs on years of tuned code, that has nowhere to go here, and we say so at length.
• 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.