When the business runs on an Access database, a problem with it stops being an IT problem quite quickly. Nobody can raise a job, a report that has worked for years starts producing rubbish, or the file won’t open at all.
We’ve specialised in supporting Access users and databases since 1999. Ring and you get through to someone who works in Access every week. No ticket queue, no first-line script.
Support for a database somebody else built
[IMG-1] Most of the Access systems we look after were written by someone else. Usually that person has retired, moved on, or was never a developer to begin with. Plenty of these databases started as one person’s replacement for a spreadsheet, and the business quietly grew around them.
We’ll take one on. The first job is working out what it actually does: where the data sits, what the forms and queries are really doing, what’s hard-coded, and what’s likely to cause trouble next. You get a plain-English account of the state of it, and after that you have somebody to call.
What we deal with
- Errors and crashes, including the ones that only happen on one person’s PC
- Databases that won’t open, or open with data missing Access repair and recovery
- Slow forms, slow queries, slow reports Access performance tuning
- Queries and reports that broke after a data change, and reports whose figures don’t add up
- VBA errors, and code nobody left any notes for Access VBA development
- Multi-user problems, record locking, network and Terminal Server / RDS issues
- Front end / back end splits done properly, so an update never overwrites live data
- Access talking to SQL Server, Microsoft 365, accounts software and other systems Access integration and APIs
- Windows and Office updates that break something that worked fine on Friday
- Lost passwords, permissions and user access
- Setting Access up on new machines and for new starters
Changes, not just fixes
Most calls aren’t breakages. They’re a new report finance needs, another field on a form, a change in how the business works that the database hasn’t caught up with, or a customer wanting something the system was never built to do.
We do that work as it comes. Small changes usually go through in days. Anything bigger we scope and price first, so you can decide whether it’s worth doing. Nothing gets rebuilt because we fancied rebuilding it.
New system rather than changes to an existing one? Access design and development
Keeping it out of trouble
[IMG-2] — Left-aligned, half column. A page of real output: health check summary, back end size and corruption check, or a compact-and-repair log. Redacted, but with actual numbers visible.
Alt: Microsoft Access database health check report
If you’d rather not wait for the next problem, we keep an eye on the things that actually cause outages: whether backups are running and restoring, how close the back end is to the 2GB limit, early corruption warnings, indexes, and the list of small annoyances users never bother reporting.
Inherited a system and don’t know what shape it’s in? Start with an Access health check.
If Access is reaching its limits
Access is a sensible place for a business system to live, and we’d sooner support yours than talk you into a rewrite. There’s a point where the symptoms stop being fixable, though: too many people in it at once, a back end near the 2GB limit, staff needing at it from outside the office or off a phone, or a requirement Access simply can’t meet.
The options at that stage are usually less drastic than people expect. Move the data to SQL Server or Azure and keep the Access front end Access migration and upgrades. Or put a web or mobile interface on the database you already have Access modernisation.
We’ll tell you which one applies, and if the answer is “leave it alone for now”, we’ll tell you that too.