Can I hide my mistake ?

[Guest]

Hello. Boy have I messed up. I was fooling around with my database 2000 and
opened it in Word, some of it got deleted by accident and now it says
"unrecognized database format" and won't open.

I really am low on the totem pole and probably will get fired over this if
the database gure can prove I did this. I know I shouldn't play around with
things but I did. I never again will experiement with things I don't know
enough about.

Will the database guru here at work be able to tell I did this ???

Signed, a big dumba**

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

for the most part, this means the file is damaged beyond easy repair.

In other words, you could perhaps the file out to a data recover service,
but there is not a easy quick way to fix this.

Of course, the sensible alternative would simple mean that you go to
yesterdays backup.

I am not going to be silly and suggest that you should have played with a
copy, since that is useless hind sight, but if you are going to mess with a
file, and do strange things to it...doing this on a copy makes a lot of
sense.

If you have a backup that is not too old, that's about all I can suggest, or
a repair outfit.......

 

[John Vinson]

Hello. Boy have I messed up. I was fooling around with my database 2000 and
opened it in Word, some of it got deleted by accident and now it says
"unrecognized database format" and won't open.

It's toast. Gone. Just opening it in Word and saving it permanetly
destroys a database (you don't even need to delete anything).

I really am low on the totem pole and probably will get fired over this if
the database gure can prove I did this. I know I shouldn't play around with
things but I did. I never again will experiement with things I don't know
enough about.

Will the database guru here at work be able to tell I did this ???

They'll be able to tell that *somebody* did, and might or might not be
able to tell who.

If the database guru is of the Enlightened, a true Guru, then there
will be a current backup and your error will be at most a minor
inconvenience, not a disaster. If he or she is still mired in the ways
of darkness, the current backup may be six months old - or unreadable,
or both - and the excrement will truly strike the ventilator. Good
luck!

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[David Cox]

Life is experimenting with things we do not know enough about.

We get to try again tomorrow by making the right guesses which experiments
to do today. "Smarting, but smarter"

Covering up a mistake can sometimes be the worst possible thing to do. My
teacher and mentor as a trainee put enormous power into the hands of the
users and reckoned that it was up to him to design things so that the system
survived. He believed that that the firm would be the better for it if they
could learn by experimenting and from their mistakes. In ten years I did not
see that approach disproven, and it was one of the best DP departments I
ever came across.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your time and answer. I believe there is a current backup.


Just curious, how can you tell the file has been changed or messed with ?

 

[David Cox]

Not loading is a big clue

Thank you for your time and answer. I believe there is a current backup.


Just curious, how can you tell the file has been changed or messed with ?

 

[John Vinson]

Just curious, how can you tell the file has been changed or messed with ?

A database which ran fine at 3pm, and is corrupt and doesn't even have
the MDB structure at 3:30, has evidently changed... doesn't take a
wizard to figure that out!

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[Tony Toews]

In other words, you could perhaps the file out to a data recover service,
but there is not a easy quick way to fix this.

No, even a data recovery service couldn't fix it as many bytes within
the MDB have been changed.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
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