How to distibute an updated backend database? (1 Viewer)

I'm writing a database which several friends can use (as a personal database). It will be split into a backend (.mdb) and a frontend (probably a .mde). I can then update the frontend and distibute this easily to overwrite the older version.

How can I distribute the newer backend? Each person will have their own data. If this was php/mysql I could write a php script to update the tables and add new columns, but I'm not sure how to do this in access.

Does importing a table (structure only) overwrite exisiting data? or is their another way?

Thanks.

Look up ALTER TABLE which is probably what you would use with mysql.