Using Office Express on a Network

NOTE: This page assumes your network is already connected and functioning properly.

Office Express can easily access it's data from any computer or drive that is connected to your network, no matter how big or small the network.

When you click on My Computer from the Windows desktop, any computer or drives listed under My Computer or My Network Places can be used.

Sharing Office Express between a Laptop and a Desktop

The integration of laptops and desktops is quite easy. You would want to make the laptop as the main data store, meaning the laptop's hard drive contains the data file for Office Express. You would want to do it this way because the laptop is with you all the time.

Office Express on the desktop is then setup to access the data file on the laptop. In essence, the desktop does not have a data file of its own. By doing it this way one you only have a single set of data being accessed by two computers. This eliminates having to copy updated data files back and forth, which can get messy if your not careful.

The most pain free hardware setup would be to use a wireless network. This eliminates the need to have to plug a network cable into the notebook each time you want to use the desktop.

To change the Data Location on the Desktop

Make sure Office Express is installed and running on both machines. At this point each copy of Office Express is using its own database local to the machine it is installed on. You are going to redirect the copy of Office Express on the desktop computer to access the laptops data.

NOTE: Make sure  sharing is enabled on the laptop's \Program Files\Office Express\Database directory first, otherwise the desktop won't be able to locate the database on the laptop.

1. from the Data option on the Main menu select the Change Location of Database... option

2. a Windows dialog box will be displayed from where you can choose the new location of the database. If you mapped a drive letter to the laptop, like Z:, it will appear under My Computer, if not then find the laptop in My network places.

3. Don't worry about the file name in the dialog box. Office Express just needs the "path" to the data file. Office Express stores it's database in \Program Files\Office Express\Database. After you navigated to the path where the data is stored on the laptop click the Open button.

4. Restart Office Express to make sure the data connection is correct.

To see where Office Express is "pulling" the data from:

1. click the Data option in the Main menu 

2. select View Database Statistics.

3. scroll down the statistics window until you see Data Server Information

4. a little further down, the Database Path: field defines the database that is currently being used.

NOTE: The only drawback is Office Express on the desktop can not access the database if the laptop is not present or is not on.

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