Access Services in SharePoint Roadmap

We no longer recommend Access Services for new web apps and web databases.

• In SharePoint Server this feature will be supported in accordance with the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy.

• This feature will be retired from Office 365 and SharePoint Online. We will stop creation of new Access-based web apps and Access web databases in Office 365 and SharePoint Online starting in June, 2017 and shut down any remaining web apps and web databases by April, 2018.

For more information, see Updating the Access Services in SharePoint Roadmap.

Access Desktop databases (.accdb) are not impacted by this decision. Desktop databases have powerful features that make Access a popular way to create business solutions. We will continue to invest in Access Desktop databases by expanding data connectivity, database management, and other features.

Consider using PowerApps

As an alternative to Access web apps and web databases, we recommend that you consider Microsoft PowerApps to build no-code business solutions for the web and mobile devices. Although PowerApps is a relatively new product, Microsoft is making a significant investment in PowerApps to make it a premiere tool for business solutions, and is adding new features on a regular basis.

You can read more about how to re-create an existing Access web app as a PowerApp in the white paper, Introduction to Microsoft PowerApps for Access web apps developers.

Note: PowerApps is not yet available in Office 365 operated by 21Vianet or Office 365 Germany.

Ways to migrate Access web app data

Most likely, you want to save the data you have in an Access web app. Here are several ways to migrate data from an Access web app to another data source.

SharePoint    You can export the data to SharePoint lists. We recommend using the Export to SharePoint Lists command available from the Access web apps browser. For more information, see Export Access web app tables to SharePoint.

Access desktop database    You can export the data to an Access desktop database. For more information, see Export Access web app tables to an Access desktop database.

Microsoft SQL Server    You can migrate the data to SQL Server:

1. Export the data to an Access desktop database. For more information, see Export Access web app tables to an Access desktop database.

2. Migrate the data in the Access desktop database to Microsoft SQL Server. For more information, see the SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) v7.3.

3. Once the data is in SQL Server, you can also Link to SQL Server data from the Access desktop database.

Alternatively, consider using the SQL Azure Migration Wizard to migrate directly data from the Access web app back-end (a SQL Azure database) to an SQL Server database. For more information, see SQL Server database migration to Azure SQL Database and the SQL Database Migration Wizard.

Turn off Access apps in your O365 SharePoint environment

If you're an admin, you can prevent the creation of new Access web apps in your environment. For more information, see Enable and disable Access apps in your organization.

Scan your tenant for the presence of any Access web apps and web databases

If you're an admin, you can use a new tool to scan for the existence of any Access web apps or web databases deployed in your tenant. The scanning tool produces an inventory list which you can then use to plan for migration of your Access web apps and web databases.

You can download the scanning tool and learn how to use it from this location: SharePoint Access App scanner.