Database problems after zip/unzip sent through email

[sterlecki]

BACKGROUND: I have a small Access DB application that I am slowly building different utilities for. The main part of the Db is working and once a week the users zip it up and email to me. I work on this, make my changes, zip it up and email back to them. Lately we keep seeing code or relationships change when changes weren't made or omitted when changes were made. The last time I lost several relationships and didn't notice until a few transfers had taken place. Naturally some of the tables on the many side of a one to many relationship now had orphan records.

QUESTION: Am I causing myself problems with the zip/unzip and email process? Is there a better way? Would replication work? Other Suggestions?

INFO: I am running Access 2002. The other party is running Access 2003. The DB is in Access 2000 DAO

I like to work with the latest data the users have input so I don't have to reload tables etc.

thanks in advance

 

[RiverGuy]

Are you sure that the users are not accidentally deleting the relationships? I would think that if the zipping were causing something to happen, then the file would just be corrupted. Do you have a secure FTP that you can use with your users to test as an alternative to the emailing?

 

[sterlecki]

Using FTP was the next thing I was going to try using. I just wanted to see if anyone else had ever had this type of problem.

Thanks

 

[PRPhx]

A couple of other things to try.

1) At what compression level are you zipping your files? Try dropping the level by one and see if that helps.

2) Can you make a network connection to the users pc? And if so, you could copy the files over that way (Or better yet write a script to do it automatically).