After successful repair import into new Microsoft Access MDB

Strongly suggested by Peter Miller

You should ALWAYS be suspicious of any file marked corrupted.  You should immediately make a backup of the corrupted file and put it away.  This pristine copy may be necessary later if other recovery techniques fail. 

Then try to compact/repair the file, but once the process finishes, open the file and check ALL its objects for data loss (or in the case of non-data objects like forms or reports, that they are not still corrupted (you did know, didn't you, that compact/repair do not do much at all about finding and repairing corrupted forms and reports, now didn't you?). 

Check that MSysCompactErrors hasn't been created or had new entries added.  If it does, then these records document the objects and or data removed as part of the repair.  Make a backup of the repaired file.

Also, it never hurts to create a new database and import all repaired objects (don't import MSysCompactErrors or it will cause some confusion should the repaired file become corrupted again).  Perhaps then you might throw the new file back into (tentative) production and see if it works out ok.

My note: When importing tables into a new MDB the relationships window layout is lost.  Use Michka's SysRels utility to copy these from a backup.   Double check that the number of records in the tables are the same as in the old MDB or reasonable when compared to last nights backup.

For corrections or additional information to be added to this page please email me.
Tony Toews tony@granite.ab.ca

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