Unfortunately, Access doesn't work that way. If you want them to be able to work with your database directly, they need to have Access installed. You can get away with just the free Runtime edition if they don't need to be able to edit the database structure, which is usually the case.

If you want them to work with your data without installing Access, then you'd have to use a web-based solution, or something like SharePoint.

Hi Richard. Thank you so much for your response. You are correct in that they do not need to be able to edit the database structure. But trying to get our IT department to allow any additional apps or software (which I guessing is what would be the case for Runtime) is next to impossible Another question if you have a moment...my company does have SharePoint. Could you give me a starting point of what to look at? Does SharePoint have a forms component? If so, how does that interface with Access? Thanks again. I have so many questions - but am willing to do the research/work on my own, just need a little direction

There's an Access SharePoint Seminar
This does interact with an Access db but you'll find out the basics of SharePoint lists etc.

You can work with SharePoint data in a web browser, but it's nowhere as powerful as Access. I'd say try to talk your IT guys into allowing Access. It's a Microsoft app! Surely they allow Word and Excel. It's perfectly safe.

I once created a customer survey system for staff to enter data. The users were not to use Access directly so I created an Excel spreadsheet that was specific to the survey questions. On completion of the data entry for one customer the spreadsheet interfaced to the Access table to send the data into the database. The user only ever saw the spreadsheet and the supervisor ran reports in the database.

What is your goal? To collect data? To allow them to look up data?

Thank you all for your comments. @Richard - my goal is to make it as easy & user friendly for the end user to provide the data needed to drive the work forward. We do have Access & we can request IT to push to employees - but I'm working with a group of senior executives who don't want to have to interface with a program they don't know. They have the data needed - so I was hoping to create a fillable form that was simple to use. Then grab that data & pull it into Access. I did spend some time last night creating a form in Word & then utilizing a tutorial video - wrote a bit of VB to pull the data into Excel. Not sure that will work - but I'm really trying to get this done right for my boss.

I know this actually goes against everything I preach Microsoft, but honestly if I want to collect data from people who aren't using Access, and I don't want to go through the trouble of setting up a form on my web site, I just use Google Forms. You can email out a link. They fill out the form. The data all gets stored in a Google Sheet (their version of Excel) and then whenever you want, you can just import the data into Access. This would actually make a nice little TechHelp video as I've never covered it before, and it's not super hard.