Share Windows folder outside my local network

Question

I want to share a folder and its files to a computer outside my local LAN network just like any computer accesses my folder in my LAN like: \\192.168.1.2\myfolder

I need this because I have a software on all computers in my LAN that accesses a ms-access database file on my shared folder which has all read/write rights. So, the software accesses the database like: \\192.168.1.2\myfolder\database.accmdb but how will any computer outside my LAN get that shared folder?

Answer 1

Oh my!

• First, this is an extremely bad idea to open a network share to the outside world.
  Access databases are shared as normal files through the smb protocol.
  That protocol is not really secure and opening your machine as such (you need to open and forward TCP port 139) would certainly invite lots of unwanted attention (in short, your machine will probably be exposed and taken over in a matter of a few minutes/hours unless you know exactly what you are doing to secure it).

• Second, letting people access an Access database over anything else than a fast wired LAN is another extremely bad idea (WiFI, even if it's on a local network, is bad because it's unreliable and drops in the connection can damage the access file).

The only ways you can share an Access database over the internet are:

1. you use Access 2010/2013 to create a web database that will be hosted on Sharepoint (or Office 365)

2. you use your Access database as a backend for the data that you expose through a web application that your developed yourself in PHP or ASP or something else

3. Probably the best solution for you if you have already build your Access application with Forms and Reports etc, use Remote Desktop (RDP) to let others log in to your machine and run the database.
   With RemoteApp in Windows Server 2008 and later, you can actually use RDP to make the application appear local instead of within a remote desktop. It's still remote, but the windows appear like normal windows on the client mahcine, making it look like the application is on the user machine.
   However, if you have more than 1 or 2 users, you will need Windows Server to expose your application through RDP as the standard Window OS limits concurrent sessions to 2 (although there appear to be ways around that)

A company called AccessHosting (I have no affiliation to it) seems to propose various versions of these services (Sharepoint and RDP in particular).
There are probably others that do the same.