Will input query work if users don't have Access?

[AnnK]

This may seem an odd question- but I'm trying to give users a way to look at data that is in the database, without using Access. I was thinking if I created an Excel sheet with VBA instructions to open Access and run a query they could put in their department and the query would give them data for only their group. (It has to be limited because the whole dataset is too big for Excel to handle smoothly). I'm really hoping to not have to give them Access, because it will complicate our data control.

I've had other automation sort of things run successfully from excel on a computer without access...but I'm wondering what the limitations are. I don't really want to spend days perfecting the code only to have it not work :{

Thanks for any wisdom on the subject!

[Stewart Ross]

You need at least the run-time version of Access in order to run Access queries, or to connect via ODBC to the tables (though I haven't tried this with the runtime version myself). The run-time version is available free from Microsoft, and it allows you to deploy MS Access databases without deploying the full MS-Office development product on each machine that runs the front-end.

For Office 2007 this link takes you to the download section for the product.

-Stewart