Now that the Access 2007 runtime is available, it is time to start working with Access 2007 again for client deployments. The first order of business was to start up the Developer Extensions.

The Microsoft Access 2007 Developer Extensions are available as a free download from Microsoft.

By default these are installed in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\. I changed this to add a folder Acc2007DE so I could find them, but even then couldn’t figure out what was supposed to be happening.

Turns out that the Developer Extensions are are a COM add-in, consisting of:

Package Solution Wizard – this is similar to the older package wizard with Access 2003.

Save as Template – Allows you to save an existing database installaton as a template. Note that this is not the same as saving a database design as a template!

These appear under the round Microsoft Button in the upper left-hand corner of the Access Window.

(my screen shot programs don’t appear to be able to deal with the dropped-down menu, so you’ll need to use your imagination. )

In the following screens shots, click on the image to see a larger version.

If the Developer option does not appear under the button, do the following:
1. Click the button
2. Choose Access Options
3. Choose Add-ins
4. At the bottom of the screen choose Manage COM add-ins, then GO
5. You should get a screen showing the currently available add-ins. Like this:

Ok, so let’s try the Package Solution wizard. Here is the first screen.

I changed the destination folder to F:\Access Install Packages.

The Package Solution Wizard asks for several parameters. Since I usually install an Access application off of the C:\ root, I chose System Drive (All Users) for the location plus the folder name in the Root install folder, and thent the actual folder name uner the Install Folder. The actual install location will show up in the Example install location field.

You can use the third option under t he section regarding the Pre-installation requirements if you want to install the Access runtime on a computer which does not contain Access 2007. To include this in your setup, you’ll need to point to to a locall copy of Accessruntime.exe which you can download from the Microsoft web site.

Note under the Example Install Location, that the installed version of the program will have an .ACCDR extension, as opposed to the normal Access 2007 extension of .ACCDB.

The Acccess 2007 help files include a subset of subjects, called “Developer Reference”