Open MS Access from the Command line

Question

Why is it that if I type calc then enter in the command line the calculator opens, but when I type MSAccess in the command line it says

    'msaccess' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or bath file

I know there is a way to fix this and set it up, I have searched the web, but I don't know what to look for. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The error message means that there is no executable program named msaccess available anywhere on your path. "The path" refers to a list of paths search by the command line when searching for an executable. This list is stored in the %PATH% environment variable, and is separated by semi-colons.

There are only a few possibilities:

• You are misspelling the program name, or it does not really exist. Navigate to the Access executable under C:\Program Files and verify that it is really spelled msaccess (and that it is installed). Incidentally, I just verified this on my system, so msaccess would appear to be the correct command.
• The folder which contains msaccess is not in the %PATH% variable. Type echo %PATH% to find out. If not, you can add it to the path.
• The only other possibility (very unlikely, but mentioned here for completeness sake) is that the file exists in the path, but is not actually an executable.

Answer 2

In addition to jpaugh, it is also possible to open a command-prompt in the folder where the msaccess executable is located (i.e if the folder is missing in the %PATH% variable).

To do this right click and press shift simultaneously anywhere in the target folder e.g in my case I have Microsoft office 2016, so in the case the location of my executable is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microft Office\Office16

So if I right click and press shift I can open a command prompt, which when I enter msaccess I can start Microsoft Access without that error