We started a food pantry and began using Access to store client information (we have to report information monthly.) We started with one laptop- all volunteer!- but as we grew there are now three laptops that we copy the main Access database onto each with a jump drive and each user registers clients throughout the day. At the end of the day, a copy of each of the three users databases are made and a volunteer takes this home and manually updates the main databse with changes that each of the three individuals recorded on their laptop. So each laptop runs independently of each other, but is there a way to network these independent laptops to share the common Microsoft Access database so that updates and changes made by each user are automatically recorded on the main database? We are not technologically illiterate, but as you can tell we are also not advanced computer users! Thank you for any suggestions (ANY!) that you can make to allow us to easier capture the required data on multiple laptops and have it merged in a central database without manually taking hours to do it! Other info- no 'network' exists, but wireless internet access is available. Each laptop is owned by the individual volunteer and brought in the day of the food pantry distribution. All are newer with Vista or 7 operating systems.

You'll probably want to ask this in the Office Forum or Windows 7 Forum: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/office2007deployment/threads http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/w7itpro/

Hi, Have you found an answer to your post yet? I am looking for something very similar to what you have, but we haven't grown that far yet. We just opened a second location. Would there be any way you could possibly provide me with your database? Right now everything is done on paper and people are wanting to put data into Excel. I would like to do this the right way, but am having trouble finding anything free out there that is worth while. Thanks, Justinr999 -at- GMAIL -dot- com