Best Alternative To Ms Access
Best Alternative To Ms Access
After four years in the cloud, Microsoft Access is retiring support for browser-based business applications. This decision will have a profound effect on loyal customers and their day-to-day operations.
By April 2018, users of Access Services for SharePoint Online need to take an action or their Access-based apps will be shut down. They can migrate to a cloud-based app-building platform, or go back to desktop or on-premises software.
Alternatives to Microsoft Access. Compare Microsoft Access alternatives for your business or organization using the curated list below. SourceForge ranks the best alternatives to Microsoft Access in 2021. Compare features, ratings, user reviews, pricing, and more from Microsoft Access competitors and alternatives in order to make an informed. Both LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice are known for imitating programs from the Microsoft Office Suite and offering them as free software – Base is the equivalent alternative to Microsoft Access. The functions and characteristics of LibreOffice Base and OpenOffice Base barely differ from one another. LibreOffice is a clone of OpenOffice and ended up being more successful. The suite includes Base, which is a good free alternative to Microsoft Access. It has its latest versions for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Android. We used an internal app based on MS Access as a frontend to a MySQL database. We ran into lots of problems, and eventually rewrote the whole app in CodeGear Delphi 2007 for Win32. This has been a great success, although the migration did cost quite a lot of effort (training/hiring a couple of Delphi programmers, buying some third-party tools). Best overall Microsoft Office alternative. That could be robust spreadsheet calculations and dynamic presentation design or the ability to access files from anywhere and share them with remote.
While users of Access Desktop database apps and Access web apps for on-premises SharePoint Servers won’t be affected by this change, they remain limited by the lack of web and mobile support. There’s no doubt that leading-edge companies benefit from real-time data accessible from anywhere and collaboration across mobile devices. As technology continues to move forward, organizations that evolve with it gain a competitive edge in their fields. In addition, cloud-based software is quicker to deploy and cheaper to maintain.
Of course, you could give up on web apps altogether and stick with desktop apps or on-premises apps accessible through your corporate network. But most businesses are going in the opposite direction, moving from desktop and on-premises applications to cloud-based tools, making the former a thing of the past. If web apps are important to your business, you’ll need to migrate them to a secure, cloud-based platform — and the time is now.
Migrating your web apps is an investment of time and resources regardless of where you’re migrating to. You might as well take this opportunity to select the platform that’s best suited for your organization.
5 Reasons PowerApps Is Too Limited for Most Users:
Although PowerApps may seem like the next best thing for Access users looking for a cloud-based option, it lacks the functionality you’ve gotten used to with Access:
- PowerApps is not easy for non-technical business users to understand and build apps on.
- You need to use a number of separate tools — Flow, SharePoint, Excel, Outlook, and its database, Common Data Service — to build an app end-to-end. Other cloud-based platforms enable seamless building in one place.
- Some of these tools are only available at an additional cost.
- You need to build separate desktop and mobile experiences from scratch. The mobile experience will display a narrow screen size on the desktop leaving large areas of the screen unusable. Other cloud platforms enable you to build your app once; it automatically optimizes the user experience across desktop and mobile devices.
- PowerApps doesn’t enable business users to configure a finely-grained permission model, which is a key collaboration capability.
Migrating from Access to PowerApps isn’t necessarily easier than migrating to other platforms; you still need to translate your data and workflows, as well as rewrite forms, reports and flows from scratch and in separate tools.
Get Started with Your Migration Today
Microsoft Access’ announcement is a challenge for customers, but it’s also an opportunity to tap into the power of modern technology to open the door to easier and faster app building, mobile access, integration with line of business data, and ability to extend native functionality.
Migrating to Quick Base is just the beginning of a better way to work. Easily build apps to manage your processes and data from wherever you are, and collaborate just the way you need.
Ready to get started?
Watch our webinar and learn best practices for migrating your data to a cloud platform, now that Microsoft is retiring support for their cloud-based version of Access.
Recently, we had one of our clients ask us how they could access a MS Access database outside their office. To do this, they wanted to make use of their Android tablet. Their initial idea was to use a remote desktop software to access their database. While this is a viable option, it’s not the most optimal solution.
Can MS Access run on Android/iOS/Mac/Linux?
The short answer: no.
The long answer: MS Access is a Windows software. The database server which Access relies on is a Windows technology. So neither component of Access can run in any other operating system. This includes Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. (Parfait, Stackoverflow)
So what are some ways to use your MS Access database on Android?
Connect using remote desktop app
Microsoft Remote Desktop App lets you to connect to your computer outside the office. The app allows you to interact with your database as if you were sitting right in front of your computer.
But! There are two issues with this approach:
- Because of the way MS Access works and the file sizes, every time you open the database, it will take awhile to load and would use lots of cellular data. This makes this option very frustrating and almost unusable.
- The other issue is that MS Access is not mobile friendly. So you will have a hard time entering information and viewing records.
This method is a good temporary solution if you’re looking for a quick fix and can’t spend much time or money on it. It is not ideal for the long run though. Instead, read some of the alternatives below.
Use a database app for android
How can you access the database in an android application?
One way is to use a database utility app that let’s you view and edit your data tables.
The problem?
None of the forms or business logic from Access are accessible, so you’ll be viewing and editing raw data. If your database is quite simple it might do the trick but in most cases, it’s not good enough. Some examples include “Access Mobile Database Client” for iOS and “View MS Access DB” for Android.
I’ve never used these apps, so not sure how it saves the data or whether it changes the database format.
Run MS Access as web database using Sharepoint
One of the more attractive alternatives is using Office 365’s recent feature. You can now deploy MS Access databases through Sharepoint. You can access these as Sharepoint apps.
You can manage and track Access apps through a SharePoint site in a browser. This means your MS Access databases can hosted on the cloud and accessed through the web browser. Alternative, you can use the Sharepoint app. An added benefit, this method allows you to manage who has access to the app.
Some resources on how to get started with Office 365MS Access apps
If you have a team or have programming experience, then you might prefer to do all the ‘coding’ yourself. If that’s the case, the following are your options. The alternatives below are much more involved than the initial ones so keep that in mind when choosing a solution.
Convert Access database to an Android app
MS Access databases are not native to Android so we need to convert them before we can run our Access database content on Android. One option consists of syncing (or migrating) the data to a mobile friendly database such as SQLite. Once the data is in this format, Android apps can interact with it.
To access the information, you would need to develop an app that would communicate with the database and allow you to make edits. To sync back with your MS Access database, you would need a script to sync the data between this new database and your MS Access database.
Pros: Easy to use, Very responsive, Can Access Offline
Cons: Data is not in real time
Create a responsive web app
If you are starting from scratch and looking to access a database remotely then I would opt towards a web based solution rather than MS Access. Especially if you want to do it through a mobile device.
As long as the web app is mobile friendly your users will have a good experience. A web app also has the advantage of being accessible through different devices and platforms. All without having to rewrite the app for each platform.
But what if you already have a MS Access database?
To create a web app you need to split the MS Access database and move the data to a web database (e.g. MySQL, SQL Server). Otherwise, you could look at the sharepoint option above.
Once you have your web database set up, a web application will be able to connect to it. Users will be able to use their browsers to use the new web app.
The MS Access database ‘front-end’ which does not contain the data would connect to the same web server. You may need to make some changes to your forms to handle the new database format.
Pros: Real Time Data
Cons: Need internet access
Build a native android app connected to web server
The last approach is creating a native mobile app. Unlike the syncing method, this method connects to a centralized web database. This is how most of apps work for example Facebook and Instagram.
Not only you have to move the database to a web database, but also need to create a way (Web Service) for the android app to communicate with the data. Once that is set up, you need to build the rest of the app. In particular, the screens the users will use to view and edit the data.
Pros: Highly responsive, Easy to Use, Real Time Data
Cons: Need Internet Access
Other MS Access alternatives
What if you are not comfortable with programming? What are some alternatives to MS Access that run on mobile?
Best Alternative To Ms Access
The last few years we’ve seen many options released.
Free Access Alternative
App alternatives
One way to go is to download a database app. These apps are very customizable databases. You can use them to manage most types of data. They even have data synchronization across devices! Some examples include
Web based alternatives
Web based SaaS platforms have seen a huge spike the last 5 years. These ‘low-code’ solutions give you the same functionality MS Access does but on the web. Some examples include
What solution you pick it’s up to you. But, I understand it might be hard making sense of all these options. If you are struggling with which solution to select then you should ask yourself the following questions.
- Figure out your constraints. What kind of resources (expertise, time and money) are available to me?
- Do I have to conform to certain IT restrictions?
- What does my IT infrastructure look like right now? Is it flexible?
- How will my users access the data? What devices? How often?
- Do many users need to access the data at the same time? Is it critical for the data to always be up to date?
- How comfortable are your target users with technology? Are they slow learners? Do they tend to resist new initiatives?
If you are still struggling to figure out the best approach then leave a comment below. I’ll try to reply with some feedback and suggestions.
Best Alternative To Ms Access