Access 2007 file crashes when opening forms or tables

[Vexen Crabtree]

I have been developing an application (Ziggy) for many years, and find that
sometimes a Form gets 'corrupted': Attempting to open it causes Access to
crash.

Ziggy is only used by me (single user), and its size floats randomly between
6MB and 100MB, though the data in it only increases slowly. The "compact and
repair" tool never fixes a corrupt form. I am using Windows Vista, and Office
2007 SP1.

The solution is sometimes to copy all the items on the form to a new form, or,
sometimes the solution is just to edit the form in Design mode and delete
something, then put it back again. If the form can't be opened in Design mode,
the solution is to import the form from a backup.

Now, in this project,

Whenever I open *any* form or table via buttons on the Ribbon, Access crashes.
I can open them all fine in Design mode, and they operate normally and can
invoke each other properly. But as soon as I open it normally, any attempt to
open a form or table causes it to crash.

Can anyone help?

Q1. What causes these corruptions? I see online that they also occur in split
databases (with front-end and back-end in different files), but as this is a
single-user db, there is no point doing that.

Q2. I knew how to recover individual forms from this, but how to I recover an
entire application?

Q3. Has anyone who experiences similar problems found any general ways around
them?

 

[dymondjack]

Probably not a whole lot of help, but I think I can answer Q2

Q2. I knew how to recover individual forms from this, but how to I recover an
entire application?

If this corruption is due to some internal workings of Access, a decent way
to start fresh is to create a brand new db, and import everything form the
old one in it. AFAIK, it resets just about everything and starts from
scratch with all of the stuff internal to access. Similar to a compact &
repair, but more thorough, I think.

I've had to do this a number of times when working on development copies
where I did something wrong. Well, maybe it wasn't *absolutely* necessary,
but it makes me feel a little better about it anyway. Just be sure to go
through the Options on the wizard form for importing... most of what you
probably want is pre-checked, but menubars (and I think a couple others) are
not checked by default.

--
Jack Leach
www.tristatemachine.com

- "First, get your information. Then, you can distort it at your leisure."
- Mark Twain

 

[Vexen Crabtree]

If this corruption is due to some internal workings of Access, a decent way
to start fresh is to create a brand new db, and import everything form the
old one in it.

<snip>

Thanks for your wise advise, I've been giving that a go. I also took the
chance to move from a 2000-2003 file to a .accdb (2007) file. Unfortunately
this has caused a wide range of problems, so I'm working through them. At the
moment, the .app still only opens in design mode; hopefully when I work
through the format update it'll open.

At the moment I am working on this:

Public Sub CopyToClipboard(ByRef ctcString As String)
Dim ctcOutput As New DataObject
ctcOutput.SetText ctcString
ctcOutput.PutInClipboard
End Sub

It worked fine previously, but in 2007 it causes an error because the
DataObject object is unknown. The "Microsoft Forms 2.0" library which is
referenced from the 2000-2003 .mdb file isn't on the reference list anymore
for the 2007 version, so I guess I need to find a different way of writing to
the clipboard. I try to avoid .api calls if I can.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I spend more time rebuilding forms after this type of corruption than I do
actually getting anything done, once I've got it working in 2007 .accdb
format I hope it is more stable!

 

[Vexen Crabtree]

It might be worth your while to go to Allen Browne's site and scroll down
(about 2/3 the way down the page) to the Corruption/Repair section. He has a
number of papers there on both recovering from corruption and strategies to
prevent it.

http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html

Thanks for the link, there is lots of useful stuff on that site, although
none of the 'causes' of corruption listed were relevent to my single-user db,
I eventually done the "create new db and import objects" method to get things
fixed.