Access 97 Applications / Office 2003 Compatability

[Liz Ferguson]

I am trying, without much success, to research any known
problems running Access 97 applications on machines where
Office 2003 has been installed as as the default Office
suite. My company will be rolling out new machines/re-
imaged machines over the next few months with XP for the
O/S and Office 2003 as the default office installation.
Access 97 will be installed after the fact (I know this
is not the way to do it, but not my decision). Converting
the Access 97 applications at this point to Access 2003
is not an option. I simply wanted to know if anyone has
had any experiences they can share that might assist me
in troubleshooting any potential problems before they
occurr.

Many thanks in advance

(e-mail address removed)

 

[Allen Browne]

Hi Liz

Suggestions:
1. Use only the 3 most basic libraries in A97 - Access, VBA, and DAO. You
are likely to run into version problems if you used MS Graph, the calendar
control, the common dialog, Office libraries, or other ActiveX controls.

2. For the shortcut to your application, refer to the A97 executable, e.g.:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\MSACCESS.EXE" "C:\MyPath\MyFile.mdb"
The "mdb" file extension is likely to be registered to whichever version ran
last.

A better solution might be to split your app (tables-only back end on
server, everything-else-and-linked-tables front end). Create an A97 MDE to
give to your A97 users. Convert the MDB to A2003, and release an MDE for
your A2003 users. Leave the back-end in A97, so both can use the data. This
works well. The only problem we saw was resolved by turning off row-level
locking in the A2003 options.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Allen for responding. DB's are split as a matter
of policy anyway and most, if not all, front ends on the
user machines are already mde's, Unfortunately,
converting applications to 2003 is not an option, not
everyone using the same application will be upgrading to
the new machines at the same time!

Will keep checking for more info!

Thanks, Liz

-----Original Message-----
Hi Liz

Suggestions:
1. Use only the 3 most basic libraries in A97 - Access, VBA, and DAO. You
are likely to run into version problems if you used MS Graph, the calendar
control, the common dialog, Office libraries, or other ActiveX controls.

2. For the shortcut to your application, refer to the A97 executable, e.g.:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft

Office\MSACCESS.EXE" "C:\MyPath\MyFile.mdb"

 

[Tony Toews]

Thanks Allen for responding. DB's are split as a matter
of policy anyway and most, if not all, front ends on the
user machines are already mde's, Unfortunately,
converting applications to 2003 is not an option, not
everyone using the same application will be upgrading to
the new machines at the same time!

But Allen's point was that you can use A97 and A2003 FE's to update
the same A97 BE. So as you upgrade the systems from A97 to A2003
when convenient.

Tony

--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm