I am having a strange issue of being able to write to/read from an access database when I publish my windows app. I can connect to the database because I can create and view reports and view tables creating using the wizard but it will not allow me to read or write to the database when I created my own connection string. I get the following error:

"Unhandled exception has occurred in your application...Could not find file, C:...folder...path"

The connection string I'm using is: "Data Source=" & Application.StartupPath &"\databasename.mdb"

However, if I go check into the Application Files I can see that my .mdb file's publish status is Data File(Auto), which is default, and I switch that to "Include" and then publish again I can write to the database when using my coded connection string. The only problem is that I cannot view tables created from the wizard. I get the same error as before.

My problem is obviously my connection string so my question is how to I change my connection string to match what the wizard is using when it connects to a added data source?

Thanks for your help.

Hi Jason.PK,

We can use the OleDbConnectionStringBuilder to build a connection string. This is a sample:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.oledb.oledbconnectionstringbuilder.aspx.

If you want to directly create a connection string, you can follow this document which contains several samples of the connection string:
http://www.connectionstrings.com/access.
For example: Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=\directory\demo.mdb;User Id=admin;Password=;

Regards,
Aland Li

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Hi Jason.PK,

We can use the OleDbConnectionStringBuilder to build a connection string. This is a sample:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.oledb.oledbconnectionstringbuilder.aspx.

If you want to directly create a connection string, you can follow this document which contains several samples of the connection string:
http://www.connectionstrings.com/access.
For example: Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=\directory\demo.mdb;User Id=admin;Password=;

Regards,
Aland Li

---

Please mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark if they don't. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.