Understanding the Microsoft Access Database Engine Prerequisite

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I've recently had several questions on the prerequisite for the Microsoft Access Database Engine. I wanted to provide some background on this to help understand you might be seeing this prerequisite.

Here are screenshots depicting  where you may see this error:

Management Reporter needs either Microsoft Office or the free Microsoft Access Database Engine redistributable installed for the correct architecture of the machine. This means that a 64-bit machine needs either 64-bit Office or the 64-bit version of the Access Database Engine installed. The problem that many people run into is they may have a 32-bit version of Office already installed, or some other Office component installed, which prevents installation of the 64-bit version of any other Office component.

There are two functions in Management Reporter that make use of the Office components.

  • The FRx Migration Wizard needs these components installed in order to read from the frxsys32.mdb and related FRx database files. The Migration Wizard can be installed on the server or on a desktop PC, so if you run into an issue there you can just install the Migration Wizard on another PC.
  • The Process Service for Management Reporter can read data from Microsoft Office Excel workbooks to read numbers from the workbook and include those numbers at report generation time. This can be helpful for operational reports needing statistical numbers, or in consolidating companies where every company isn't on a Dynamics ERP. For this server you should either remove Office from the server if it is not needed and instead install the Access Database Engine files, or install the correct 64-bit architecture version of Office if needed by users or by other applications. Lastly, you can always install the Process Service on another machine. The Process Service can be installed on a machine other than where the Application Service is, or where Microsoft Dynamics resides.

So depending on your needs, even though you see the warning message that the Microsoft Access Database Engine should be installed, you may not need to install it. If you do not need to migrate your FRx reports, or have already migrated your reports then you do not need the Office components for the Migration Wizard. If you do not plan on linking to Microsoft Office Excel for including Excel data in reports, then you also do not need the Office components installed.