Help! Database won't sync with replica or open!

[Steph]

We are on Access 97 on Windows NT environment. All users
are on desktops. There is no password to logon, but there
are user/group permissions. The database has 2 files -
one for data, one for forms. I sync the master data file
with 2 replicas. One replica synced fine this morning.
The other one gave me error:

Synchronization between replica '...master db...' and
replica '...replica db...' failed. Can't open a database
created with a previous version of your application.

The one that gave me this error was only used by 2 users
yesterday and worked fine at end of day yesterday. The
database also has 2 files - one for data, one for forms.
I was syncing the data file.

The error message gave me OK or Help - so Help took me to
CompactDatabase Method and so I compacted the database.
Now when I try to open the main form on the master I get
this:

The field is too small to accept the amount of data you
attempted to add. Try inserting or pasting less data.

When I click 'OK' the form opens, but half the data is
missing, some fields are blank, some date fields have
dates, some date fields have #Error.

I am at a loss as to what to do to fix this. I quickly
made a backup of all 3 files in their current state and I
told all users not to open the database for now. Is it
best to get backup from overnight and replace? Is there a
way to fix whatever is wrong?

Thank you for any suggestions!

 

[Gary Miller]

Steph,

There is another newsgroup, microsoft.public.access.replication which has
some folks that really specialize in replication issues.

The previous version message is interesting. I hope no one tried to convert
it to a different version.

1) I would not try synching any more with this copy

2) If your backup has significantly more data than the problem one did since
the last succesful synch you could delete it and replace from backup. Method
3 is preferred in a replica set.

3) If that is not the case, I would just delete the problem one and create a
new replica from the design master to replace it after synching with the
other non-problem one again a couple of times to make sure that you are
'fully' synched with it. You would lose anything in the problem one since
it's last good synch of course.

Gary Miller