How to use Access as a document library

[StuLux]

Can anybody give me any advice on how to approach this problem:

I need to store various documents in Access (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.) which I have been doing by embedding them in a table. All of these documents form a sort of knowledge base and ideally I would like users to be able to search them for specific words or phrases. My initial thoughts were that I would have to make a summary list of key words and store these in a seperate field within the table and get users to search this field rather than the documents themselves. Any help in this would be great, thanks for tanking the time to read this.

P.S. I realise that Access is probably not the best tool for what I want to do but I think am stuck with it unless anybody can suggest an alternative solution using other MS Office programs.

 

[VicRauch]

I just learned about a Microsoft product called OneNote. I really don't know if it will work for you are not, but I at least thought it might be worth a look for you.
HTH,

 

[SydneyGeek]

Yep, OneNote may be (at least part of) the answer. It's essentially a note-taking tool but very flexible. You can insert screen clippings of just about anything (Web pages, for example) and / or embed other documents. Also handles audio notes.

It's an extension of Office 2003 but you buy it separately.

I try to steer away from embedding documents into Access because you quickly end up with a bloated database...

Denis

 

[StuLux]

Bloated datbase indeed, even though I have set up the embedded documents in a linked database rather than the main one this linked database is already over 230MB in size (and growing exponentially!).

Unfortunately OneNote is not an option although possibly something using SharePoint may be. Does anybody else have any innovative ideas or had to try and solve a similar problem of giving users access to a multitude of different documents with the ability to search them?

One thought I have had is to create a "master" Word document with a table that contains in one field the "key" words from the document concerned and in another field a hyperlink to that document. The master Word document would then be the only document embedded in the Access database itself. Can anybody see any flaws to this.

 

[VicRauch]

SQL Server comes to mind.