Automatically backing up an Access database

Question

We have a Microsoft Access database saved on the network drive. What I am looking for is to be able to automatically backup these files on a daily or weekly basis. What is the best way to go about this? Can somebody please explain the procedure?

Answer 1

(borrowing heavily from one of my earlier answers here...)

re: actually performing the backup

Backing up a native Access database is simply a matter of copying the entire database file (.mdb for Access_2003 and earlier, .accdb for Access_2007 and later). You could use any scripting language you prefer, even a simple Windows batch file that does something like

copy /Y d:\apps\databases\mydatabase.accdb z:\backups\databases\*.*

re: automatic scheduling of the backup

The Task Scheduler in Windows could take care of that for you. Once you've created your script to copy the database file(s) you can create a scheduled task to run it periodically. See the MSDN article Using the Task Scheduler (Windows) for more information.