MS-Access 2019 Runtime Or Ms-Access 365 Runtime?

Question

I'm planning to "upgrade" the MS-Access desktop application I've developed for various customers with various Access versions - to Access 2019. That is because of 3 main reasons:

1. Bigint support
2. Better ODBC connectivity
3. New technique for building graphs.

Now most of my customers run Access desktop applications through Access Runtime. And most of them have various versions of MS-Office Standard, say 2003, 2007, 2010 or 2013 etc. It is NOT a problem to run excel automation VBA code from Access, and we use it a lot.

If we plan to use Access 2019 to benefit from all the above advantages - what kind of Runtime am I to give to the customers? It's been said in various places that NO Access-Runtime-2019 is been planned to be built. I've talked with a Microsoft representative and he said "Your Access-2019 applications will have to be run on Access 2013 or 2016 runtime, and it is supposed to work just fine".

My 3-fold question is:

1. If an Access-2019 application - which uses the above features - is run with Access-Runtime 2013 or 2016 - will these special 2019 features really work?

2. What about Access-365-Runtime? Will these features work with it?

3. I've read about the problem to install newer versions of Office in the same machine where older versions exist: The 2016/365 Office uses C2R installation technique, while older Offices use MSI installation technique (see link here). So my conclusion is that my customers, who rely on the existence of Excel 2007 or 2010, for instance, while working with my Access applications - will have to abandon these 2007/2010 Offices because of the new Access-2019 applications that we plan to give them with Runtime 2016/365. Is that true?

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I know users with Office 365 will do fine. My question was about trying to run Access-2019 applications - in older environments of MS-Office, like Office 2007 or 2010. After all, they had paid for those Offices long before Office 365 was developed, and why would they want to change them...

This post is another clue: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45715914/access-2016-64bit-mso-365-deployed-database-cannot-run-with-any-runtime-aval?rq=1

According to what's written there, Runtime 2016 doesn't support Bigint (which is one of the features we want to use Access 2019)! So when the Microsoft representative I've talked with said "Just run it on 2016-Runtime!" - He ignored (or worse than that - didn't know) that Bigint will NOT be supported! So what do we do about it now?

Answer 1

If an Access-2019 application - which uses the above features - is run with Access-Runtime 2013 or 2016 - will these special 2019 features really work?

No. The information you got was incorrect.

I know users with Office 365 will do fine. My question was about trying to run Access-2019 applications - in older environments of MS-Office, like Office 2007 or 2010. After all, they had paid for those Offices long before Office 365 was developed, and why would they want to change them...

Because Office 2007 stopped getting security updates in 2017, and Office 2010 stopped getting security updates in 2020. Given the fact that Office documents and Outlook are major attack vector on Windows systems, using a non-supported version of Office on an Internet-connected PC is not something your customers should do (unless they enjoy paying ransom to cybercrime gangs).

I've read about the problem to install newer versions of Office in the same machine where older versions exist: The 2016/365 Office uses C2R installation technique, while older Offices use MSI installation technique (see link here). So my conclusion is that my customers, who rely on the existence of Excel 2007 or 2010, for instance, while working with my Access applications - will have to abandon these 2007/2010 Offices because of the new Access-2019 applications that we plan to give them with Runtime 2016/365. Is that true?

Let's clarify a few things first:

• Office 2007 is v12, Office 2010 is v14, Office 2013 is v15 and Office 2016/2019/2022/365 are v16.
• There are MSI and C2R versions of Office products. v14 and below are MSI, v15 is mostly MSI (Office 2013 C2R exists but is rarely used), and v16 is mostly C2R (except for Office 2016 volume licenses and the Access 2016 runtime, which are MSI).

This is what we learned by practical experience:

• Different MSI versions of Office can be installed side-by-side, except for Outlook. You will see the "Office is being installed..." window frequently if you regularly switch between different versions, which is annoying.

• MSI and C2R of the same version cannot be installed side-by-side. Thus, if a customer runs Office 365 (which is v16 C2R), you can't install the Access 2016 runtime (which is v16 MSI).

• The Access 365 Runtime is supposed to be compatible with all v16 C2R versions of Office. In practice, we had some cases where it wasn't, so we dropped support for it and required customers using v16 C2R to use an edition with the full version of Access included.

So, yes, the combination Office 2007/2010 (v12/v14 MSI) with the Access 365 Runtime (v16 C2R) should work, even though I would personally recommend against it (see the point about Office 2007/2010 being out of support above).

Answer 2

Microsoft 365 Access Runtime will support all recent feature updates. Just make sure that you're installing the latest version:

Microsoft 365 Access Runtime Online Installer

This is a discussion that shows Office 365 is essentially Office 2019 with more up-to-date features:

UserVoice