Hi Richard! I really enjoy all your tutorials on Access, thanks for all of them! The company I work for has been using Access97 for the past 12 years and refuses to purchases 2010 for ALL the new systems (30+ systems). I'm charged with becoming the new Access developer which means I am struggling with 14 year old software.
A lot of your videos are very helpful, and I eagerly wish to purchase this and the security seminar, however I don't want to spend the money if I won't be able to apply it to the 97 platform.
Is it still viable to learn with these videos on the 97 version? Meaning, should I spend the almost $400 or am I going to be missing too much to apply to our database?
Thanks!!

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Reply from Richard Rost:

The vast majority of material covered in my lessons and seminars to date will work just fine in Access 97. I've tested a lot of it going back to Access 2000 (which I still use on my critical business machines, by the way) and I've noted anything that doesn't work - providing workarounds where possible.

Here's my promise to you, however: if you buy one of my courses or seminars and find that it doesn't work with Access 97, and you're not happy with it, I'll either provide a solution that WILL work with 97 for you, or I'll credit you for the course. I don't want you buying something that won't work for you.

One thing you could recommend to your employer, however, is that they could upgrade YOU to Access 2010 and then you could upgrade and develop the database with the latest tools available. For all of the rest of your machines, you only need to download the FREE Access Runtime Edition from Microsoft. Those computers can then run and use your database WITHOUT having to have a full copy of Access on them. They just won't be able to make design changes - which is what I'm sure you want anyhow.

See the comments below THIS BLOG POST for details and a link to the Runtime Developer version of Access. It's what I use whenever I want to distribute a database to clients who don't necessarily have Access.