Access 2010 Web Databases: Viewing Tables In SharePoint

Unfortunately, as of Access 2019, Access Web Apps have been discontinued.  From the March 2017 announcement from Microsoft:

“We no longer recommend Access Services for new apps. This feature will be retired from Office 365. We will stop creation of new Access-based apps in SharePoint Online starting June 2017 and shut down any remaining apps by April 2018.”

In this blog series, I'm discussing how to convert an existing Access application to a web application (the series starts here: How Can I Put My Access Database On The Web?). As with any database project, I'm starting with the data.

When I attempted to upload my existing tables into SharePoint, I got a number of errors (Uploading the Data to SharePoint). I dealt with some of them (primary keys and unique indexes) in my last post (How can I create a Compound Unique Index?). I discussed errors in creating relationships in a web application (Creating Relationships). Last time, I talked about loading the tables into SharePoint (Uploading To SharePoint).

This time, I want to take a look at the tables in SharePoint itself. It's not really necessary. You can and should do everything you need to do in Access. However, viewing your application in SharePoint can be instructive.

Go to File > Info:

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And click the link. The opening screen will look like this:

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The Design With Access link will allow you to make changes to the application in Access. I should point out here that you should always make any changes in Access and not directly in SharePoint. You can easily mundge your database into uselessness. Clicking the link will download a new copy of the application (with an ACCDW extension) to your hard drive. Make your changes and then save it back to SharePoint.

If you want to delete the application, under Settings, click the Delete This Site link. You won't do this often with a production database, of course, but if you're experimenting, you might need to do this. In the course this series, I did it quite a lot.

Table Properties
 I can look at my table properties as well. Navigate to your lists/table by going to a URL like so:

http://<yourserver>/<yoursite>/Lists/<yourtablename>/Allitemsg.aspx

You should see your table/list in datasheet view. Click the List Settings button on the List tab of the SharePoint Ribbon.

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Clicking AuthorID, I can view the properties of that table:

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From this, I can see that all the properties I set up in Access – including the relationships – made the transition to SharePoint. However, I want to re-emphasize that although you can view your tables in SharePoint, you should never modify them there. With Access Services, everything begins and ends in Access.

Next my next post (Other Compatibility Errors), I'll finish up the data portion of this series by looking at other data related issues that you need to watch out for.
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