Non-tech speaking, and I need tech help.

[NWGal]

I am the main "tech" person at our small non-profit (hoo boy), and I am researching the best and cheapest way for us to utilize Access online. We have the opportunity to get Office 365 for a minimal cost through Tech Soup. What I need to know? Is this the solution for us? We have two locations, and right now, on my end I use Access 2013 to input and manage data for the programs I'm responsible for, and in the other location, though they have Office 2013, they don't utilize Access. What I need to do is make it possible for the other office to share the db, i.e. input and update data and run reports. I am dead-dog-dumb when it comes to techno stuff and all the tech speak included in the description of 365 is very confusing to me. I just want to know if we get this, can I migrate my existing db to it without having to go back to scratch and learn a whole other db management from scratch.
Thanks for any help and please speak s.l.o.w.l.y and simple English LOL.

[HansV]

Office 365 comes in several editions - you should investigate carefully which versions are available to your organization.

The "standard" version, Enterprise E1, does not include Access. It's "big brother" Enterprise E3 includes desktop versions of all the Office applications, among which Access.
If your databases use VBA code, you need the desktop version of Access. There is also a web version of Access (available in the Home Premium version of Office 365, not in the version for nonprofits, as far as I can tell), but that doesn't support VBA, you must use macros for all automation.

Links:
Office 365 for Nonprofits
Office 365 for Nonprofits plans and pricing

[NWGal]

Office 365 comes in several editions - you should investigate carefully which versions are available to your organization.

The "standard" version, Enterprise E1, does not include Access. It's "big brother" Enterprise E3 includes desktop versions of all the Office applications, among which Access.
If your databases use VBA code, you need the desktop version of Access. There is also a web version of Access (available in the Home Premium version of Office 365, not in the version for nonprofits, as far as I can tell), but that doesn't support VBA, you must use macros for all automation.

Links:
Office 365 for Nonprofits
Office 365 for Nonprofits plans and pricing

Yes, nice and confusing. It looks like as a non profit we can get the Pro Plus version for $2.00 per user per month. What I don't see explained well is if this gives us ability to use Access in the cloud. Btw, is it hard to convert vba to macros?

[HansV]

The ProPlus edition does include the desktop version of Access as well as the web version, so you can run both "traditional" databases and web-based databases.

The easiness/difficulty of converting existing VBA code to macros depends on what code you have. Some actions can be translated almost literally, others may be much harder or almost impossible. But in most situations it should be possible to find workarounds. (I don't have experience with web-based databases created in Access though, so I won't be much help with that)

[NWGal]

Thanks, I appreciate the info. It helps. Sad that you won't be my go-to guy for converting vba if I need to, you have been so helpful and patient with me.

[Wendell]

There is at least one other opportunity to consider when you are looking at cloud-based solutions. It is called a hybrid cloud database, and it is the situation where you run the Access front-end on your local workstation, but the back-end database is in the cloud. However, because Access always returns the complete set of data when opening a table or a query, the back-end is typically a SQL Server database. It does take a good Internet connection to make it work, but I've seen it work pretty well on a 4G LTE arrangement with SQL Azure. The advantage of this configuration is that you don't have to rely on macros, as VBA works just fine on your local PC. But it does take careful design work to make sure you aren't returning large numbers of records.

Here are a couple of links to what other people have to say about it:
Microsoft Access and Cloud Computing with SQL Azure Databases
Move Access Data to the Cloud
Yes, we can get there from here

I should also note one other way of creating multi-location databases - it also uses SQL Server and the replication feature as the back-end. It does require a fair bit of ongoing administrative work however.