I’m using powershell to

1. Close Access Database,
2. Download updated Access front end to local machines,
3. Update (overwrite) local documents, and
4. Launch the Access database with parameters using cmd.exe.

Everything works fine, but the Exit command doesn’t work after using cmd.exe command to launch the database.

If I comment out the cmd.exe command, then the Exit command works just fine. But if I use the Exit command, the script stops there and the Exit command does not work. Below is the entire code that I’m talking about.

## Close Microsoft Access
Stop-process -name MSACCESS -Force

## Download updated Access database to local machine
Copy-Item "F:\New_DB\Win7DBDocs\WC_Sys.mdb" -Destination "C:\DB_Docs" -Recurse -Force

## Copy Documents and Spreadsheets to local machine
echo "Overwriting files C:\DB_WPDocs"
Copy-Item -Path "F:\New_DB\DB_WPDocs\*" -Destination "C:\DB_WPDocs" -Recurse -Force

## Launch Microsoft Access with Parameters
cmd.exe /c "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\MSACCESS.EXE" "C:\DB_Docs\WC_Sys.mdb" /WRKGRP "F:\DB_Docs\Secured.mdw"

Exit

>Solution :

cmd.exe will block until MSACCESS.EXE exits.

To make cmd.exe launch the program and return immediately, use the start command:

cmd.exe /c start "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\MSACCESS.EXE" "C:\DB_Docs\WC_Sys.mdb" /WRKGRP "F:\DB_Docs\Secured.mdw"

… or drop cmd.exe completely and use the Start-Process cmdlet instead:

Start-Process "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\MSACCESS.EXE" -ArgumentList "C:\DB_Docs\WC_Sys.mdb", /WRKGRP, "F:\DB_Docs\Secured.mdw"