Converting Access 2000 mdb to 2002-2003 format?

[Dougmeister]

Are there *any* downsides to doing this?

We have been an Access 2000 shop since, well, 2000. Finally made the move to Office 2003, having some issues with incompatibility of 3rd party controls (FMS, Inc.), and noticed the other day that I could "convert" the .mdb file.

Are there any reasons why I should *not*?
Are there any reasons why I *should*?

Thanks for your expertise.

 

[BobStubbs]

From experiences in my company ...

-- Don't convert if you have a 'mixed population' of users, i.e. some on Access 2003, some still on 2000. If you convert, the Access 2000 users won't be able to open the file.

-- DO convert in other cases. If your application works OK in Access 2000, it should convert to 2003. My suggestion is:

---- Make a copy of the database
---- Log in as Administrator
---- Compile the VBA code and make sure it is error-free
---- Let Access 2003 perform the conversion
---- Test the converted database
---- If it's multi-user, do a multi-user test

-- If everything goes OK with the test version, convert the live database.

-- The only problem I have seen which is specific to conversion, related to a database which had started life in a very old version of Access (Access 2 I think!), and had already been converted via 97 into 2000. When this was converted to 2003 format, I had error messages about libraries no longer being available. If you have any databases which started life in Access 97 or earlier, then I suggest:

-- Before conversion, check the required libraries via the Tools ... References menu option in the Visual Basic editing window. If any References are not at the version current for Access 2000, update them and check that the database is error-free.
-- Once the references are correct for Access 2000, you should convert to 2003 with no problems.
-- If it helps, here is a list of references from one of my Access 2000 databases, which I know converts OK to 2003 file format:

Visual Basic for Applications
Microsoft Access 9.0 Object Library
Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 2.1 Library
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility 5.3
OLE Automation
Microsoft DAO 3.6 object library
Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects Recordset 2.5 Library
Microsoft ADO Ext. 2.5 for DDL and Security

This list (in the order shown above) was recommended to me by another Tek-Tips member, and has always worked for me!



Bob Stubbs