Q: How can I share my Access database on my intranet (LAN) network?

A: In a nutshell, you really just have to set up a shared folder (either on your PC or on a Windows Server) and make sure your users have read and write access to it. Then, they can open the database and work with it. There's nothing else you have to do; Access handles file and record locking internally.

Ideally, you should SPLIT the database into two files. Your "front end" database file will have the code (forms, reports, queries, etc.) and the "back end" will contain the tables. You put the tables on the server, and the front-end copy on the workstations. This reduces overhead, and allows you to still make design changes to your forms while people are using the database. I cover this in Access 313, Lesson 6.

Unfortunately, Access by itself isn't very secure. Giving your users full read/write permissions to a network share means that anyone could just DELETE your database file. In order to protect against that, you would need to set up a Database Server like SQL SERVER (which I'll be making classes for soon). However, in the mean time, my Access Security Seminar shows you everything you CAN do to lock down your Access database to prevent malicious users from wrecking havoc.

Hope this helps.