Sharing a performance issue

[Guest]

I have seen a number of performance issue questions. I created a 1600 record
database by importing from Excel. It was taking up to 30 secs to open
reports in design mode...50 secs to save changes to reports. I then realized
that by default my Access 2003 created Access 2000 database evidently because
the Excel file was an older version. After converting to 2003 format and
compacting the former 50 sec to 240 sec waiting dropped to three seconds.

 

[Rick Brandt]

I have seen a number of performance issue questions. I created a
1600 record database by importing from Excel. It was taking up to 30
secs to open reports in design mode...50 secs to save changes to
reports. I then realized that by default my Access 2003 created
Access 2000 database evidently because the Excel file was an older
version. After converting to 2003 format and compacting the former
50 sec to 240 sec waiting dropped to three seconds.

Must be something else. Unless you change it Access 2002 and Access 2003
always use Access 2000 file format by default.

The file was likely bloated or corrupted somewhat and the conversion fixed
that, but you could probably convert it back to 2000 format and it would
still be fine.

 

[Guest]

Really Rick??? It is a fairly large database with alot of info.....it seems
to work fine and all the info is still intact. I would hate to touch it
again for fear of corrupting something. Why is Access 2003 defaulting to
version 2000?

 

[Brendan Reynolds]

Probably because Microsoft took a lot of stick back in 2000 from customers
who upgraded to Office 2000 and then complained that they could no longer
share files with colleagues who had not upgraded. If that's not a concern
for you, then by all means stick with the 2002 format.

Did you try compacting before you converted? If not, it could be the compact
that made (some of) the difference rather than the conversion.

--
Brendan Reynolds (MVP)
http://brenreyn.blogspot.com

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[Guest]

Well...good point...it was just such a dramatic difference..the physical size
of the database was about 830 MB...after compacting it was 620 MB

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

I have seen a number of performance issue questions. I created a
1600 record database by importing from Excel. It was taking up to 30
secs to open reports in design mode...50 secs to save changes to
reports. I then realized that by default my Access 2003 created
Access 2000 database evidently because the Excel file was an older
version. After converting to 2003 format and compacting the former
50 sec to 240 sec waiting dropped to three seconds.

Another point to check, especially if it's slow saving design changes,
is the setting of the Name AutoCorrect option (Tools -> Options... ->
General tab). Unless its operation has been fixed in Access 2003, this
feature is so buggy that I generally suggest that people disable it. I
seem to recall that one of the new features in A2003 depends on it
(something to do with reporting object dependencies, maybe), but my
guess is that you can do without that feature if disabling Name
AuroCorrect makes as big a difference as it usually does.

 

[Joseph Meehan]

Really Rick??? It is a fairly large database with alot of
info.....it seems to work fine and all the info is still intact.

First 1,600 records in Access is a small database. Professionally my
databases are in the 300,000 record size range.

I would suggest that you get in the habit of running repair and compact
on a regular schedule.