Sql-server – Connect Access 2007 to SQL Server 2008 Database

access-data-projectms-accessms-access-2007sql server

I've seen numerous answers to similar questions like this one. I haven't seen on the web many people have asked the seemingly simple question "How do I connect Access 2007 to an SQL server 2008 database" – but all of the answers describe how you can migrate from access 2007 to an sql server 2008 database, or they describe how to connect access 2007 to an sql server 2005 database. I can't find any simple solution to my problem (and probably this is a problem for many others). Here is the question (sorry for the over emphasis):

How do I connect to an sql server 2008 database (and I mean 2008, not 2005 🙂 ) from access 2007? Apologies again for the over emphasis, but this very simple question, and what I thought should be a very simple task seems, yes, … impossible!
I tried running sql server browser, enabling pipes, TCP etc, but it seems that with 2008 SQLEXPRESS just isn't recognised! Please can someone help with this.
Peter

Best Answer

Guys - you really should check whether this works before firing off random answers. It takes all of about a minute to run up an Access project and discover that it doesn't actually connect to SQL 2008 easily.

There are plenty of reasons to use projects instead of ODBC, but here's a few:

  • Existence of DSN on deployment machines cannot be guaranteed
  • Network traffic - does not do pass-through queries by default
  • Poor support for stored procedures

Assuming that appropriate protocols have been enabled, the solution is to go to the Advanced tab of the data link dialog and delete the value in the Network Library setting.