Just for your info...

There was nothing wrong with the Office install.

For some reason when moving the ACCESS database file to the Vista machine, Vista decided that the current logged in user (admin account) did not have the correct privileges.

I tried the Documents folder and many other locations, tried setting permissions on the file itself to no avail.

So I moved it to a folder c:\downloads and shared the folder. This finally gave read/write privileges to the Vista user.

I tried sharing the access file directly from the documents folder, and Vista said it was shared, however when I went to have Vista show me all shares, that file was not in the list.

It works and I will learn why eventually I suppose.