Solution:
There’s no way to have WordPress connect to an Access DB because Access isn’t persistent, it’s on demand. The only way I can imagine handling it would depend on Access more than anything. Assuming Access can using the ODBC connectors installed on the windows system it’s running on, you could do the following:
- Setup the MySQL ODBC Connector on any systems which would run the Access DB you’re setting up. I assume the WordPress install is using MySQL.
- Setup a new ODBC connection using that connector within Access to the WordPress database (you can use the same connection information stored in the WordPress root directory in a file called wp_config.php).
- If you’re connecting successfully, you can then read the wp_users table using properly formatted SQL commands (select * from wp_users, for instance).
- The function within Access that manages this can either be scheduled to do it periodically while Access is open or just when Access is initialized. Depending on your needs.
- You’ll have to compare it to a local table of users to find differences if you’re interested in all changes, though the user_login is static through normal channels so it’s a good key. There’s also a “user_registered” date/time column in wp_users so you could just look for users who registered since your last update/change to the local access table.
I’m not familiar with Access beyond a cursory understanding of it as a data source and some minor development functions, so there may be a much easier way to do it, but this is how I’d do it in any system that needed the user information from WordPress.