title: How can I automatically disconnect idle users from a MS Access DB?
body: <p>MS Office 365 ProPlus, Access 2007 - 2016</p>
  
  <p>Here's the problem...</p>
  
  <p>I have a MS Access DB on a shared file server which many users from many sites can access to make a few small edits on a weekly basis.  Occasionally a user with an active connection will abruptly shut down their client server (their laptop) leaving a dangling connection to the DB which results in a DB in limbo which cannot be opened.  Messages indicate that it's corrupted and the option to repair it just hangs.  Not a big deal because I have a task scheduler job that backs-up (copies) the DB every 3 hours and I can just use the most recent backup to restore.  But I can't even delete/clobber the DB with the backup because the dangling process is connected and Windows refuses to let me delete it (which is a problem in and of itself IMO).</p>
  
  <p>The solution is to find the connection, kill it, delete the .accdb and the .laccdb, then replace it with the backup.  But unfortunately, I don't have privs to find/kill the connection, so I have to engage someone in IT to go do that (can take a long time &amp; the person I get often doesn't know how to do this).</p>
  
  <p>What would really alleviate the problem is an automated DB disconnect for client processes that are idle for more than x minutes.  I saw something similar to this using a form.  But my users edit the cells in the tables directly (they like the ExCel style editing over forms).  I searched DB options and don't see an option to set up a idle timeout/disconnect for the DB in general.</p>
  
  <p>Question:  Is there a way to set up an idle timeout like this which will close the DB connection after x minutes?</p>
  
  <p>Question:  Given the problem stated, is there another way to prevent these DB "corruptions".  Everything I've read about this is along the lines of "educate your users to close Access when done".  There are too many users and I doubt they'll pay attention.</p>
  
  <p>Question:  Access seems like a not-so robust DB for this, but the users really want the ExCel style interface (edit cells in records without forms). The record level locking mech seems to work well.  And I love the fact that I can easily set up triggers and constraints to maintain data quality, query the thing with SQL, etc... (ExCel not so good for this).  But if there's a better alternative than Access, I'm all ears.  </p>
  
  <p>Thanks for any ideas !</p>