Migrating Access Services from SharePoint Online to On-premises

Microsoft are ending support for Access Services in SharePoint Online from April 2018. This means anyone using Access Services has to make a choice and very soon about what they do as support ends. There are several possible choices:

Option 1: Move back to SharePoint 2016 On-Premises. Note that older SharePoint versions are not supported. This provides similar functionality but means you’re moving from the cloud back to either on-premises or a hosted SharePoint environment.

  • Using Microsoft Access (Desktop), connect to the Access Web App
  • Choose Save As, choose Snapshot to export the App and related data to a local file
  • In SharePoint, go to the App management site and import the App
  • Add the exported App into a SharePoint site in your SP 2016 farm

In addition to deploying back to either an on-premises or hosted SharePoint 2016 farm, there are other options to consider.

Option 2: Converting to SharePoint Lists. This option is really only suitable to relatively simple solutions and you lose much of the functionality Access Web Apps have that lead you to use them in the first place.

Option 3: Convert to PowerApps. This is a redevelopment and is worth considering bearing in mind that there are functionality gaps between the old and new solution that may need to be worked through. Read more here.

Option 4: Convert back to a desktop Access database. The benefits of using a web based solution are lost, but it may be the option of last resort for some.

Further information that is useful for anyone using Access Web Apps can be found in the roadmap.

 

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