Access 2010: The Missing Manual

Your First Web Database

You have two ways to create a web database:

• Create a brand-new, from-scratch web database.

• Take an ordinary database and transform it into a web database.

When possible, the first option is the best. If you start with a web database, Access won’t let you add incompatible features to your tables (for the most part; it can’t catch everything). By contrast, when you convert an existing database, Access does all its compatibility checking in one big step. If you’ve broken the web database rules, you need to correct the problem and start the transformation over. And unless you have an exceedingly simple database, it’s almost guaranteed to have some issues that will conflict with the web database feature.

Tip

If there’s even a possibility that you might use the SharePoint hosting features, you should consider creating a web database. Even if you don’t plan to use these features right away, it’s perfectly acceptable to use a web database in a desktop setting. This way, you keep the door open to a quick and easy migration in the future.

Creating a New Web Database

To start out with a new, blank web database, follow these steps:

1. Choose File→New.

2. Select the template named “Blank web database”.

3. Fill in a database file name (and optionally, change the folder where it will be created), just as you would do with any new database.

4. Click Create.

When you create a new web database, Access creates a blank table in Datasheet view, just as when you create a new normal database. However, ...