Schedule a bakcup

[Guest]

How do I schedule a backup in Access 2003.
I want to provide the user of the database with the option to back
up the database when he wants. I would like to use the new command (as of
Access 2002/3): Back Up Database ... (this is found on the File menu and the
Tools --> Database Utilities menu). This command is available only when you
have a database open and does not allow you to specify which database you
would like to back up (it assumes the currently open database), then you are
allowed to specify the location and file name. This command works fine from
the menu but how do I schedule it ?

 

[Douglas J Steele]

Why would you need to schedule it? All you need to backup a database is to
copy the MDB file. Just make sure that the file isn't in use when you back
it up (i.e. that the LDB file doesn't exist)

 

[tony]

you could set a timer to back up the database at the end of the workday
when the db is closed down by examining the time of day and using
certain criteria in regard to that to initiate the backup... with that
you could have it back up the files on a day by day cycle so that you
could see Monday's data, and then Tuesday's etc. the system would
overwrite the Monday backup on the next Monday backup creation so you
would have a weeks worth of data to review.
Something to consider

Tony

 

[Ron2005]

Besides that, what the menu backup does is backup the application that
you are running NOT the BE tables that contain the data.

We have accomplished the backup process in two different ways.

1) create a BAT file to do the copies of the BE mdb file and use
windows scheduling to schedule the task

2) We created a stand alone mdb with an auto exec that essentially does
the same copy scenario, however it reads a linked backup control table
that tells it what / where the files are to be backedup and where to
put them and when to do this. Then we used windows scheduling to call
this app every two hours during the working day to perform whatever
backups the control table says to perform. It works great. We added it
for a heavily used mdb that it turns out the network backup only
backedup every 2 weeks or so. That was too much to redo a second time
(after we did it that one time).

Ron

 

[Guest]

But I was wondering is there way of scheduling it through File--> Menu etc.

 

[Douglas J Steele]

No, there isn't.

There might be a way of programmatically invoking the same logic, and you
could then have a macro call that function when you run the application, but
there's no scheduling feature built into Access.

 

[Albert D.Kallal]

One solution is to split your database. In fact, you should split it anyway.

then, you can build some code that makes a copy of the data only file....

You can read about splitting here...

http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Articles/split/index.htm