Access 97 Conversion to 2007

[David]

I have several databases that are created in Access 97, all have a
fair amount of coding in the forms, and my IT department would like to
upgrade our systems to Office 2007.

I know that there were a lot of conversion issues in going from '97 to
'00 and '03, which is why we remained on the old platform, but my IT
guy is telling me that the '07 version will work fine, including all
of the coding issues.

Has anyone else tried to upgrade from '97 to '07? Can I trust this
guy? The information in these files is quite sensitive and really
guide much of our reporting and workflow, it would be a disaster if we
upgraded and then had to pull them back in to reinstall the old
version all over again. It's 80+ associates and due to the
configuration it's an all or nothing approach.

Any feedback, positive or negative, would be appreciated!

Happy Holidays!

Dave

 

[Rick Brandt]

I have several databases that are created in Access 97, all have a fair
amount of coding in the forms, and my IT department would like to
upgrade our systems to Office 2007.

I know that there were a lot of conversion issues in going from '97 to
'00 and '03, which is why we remained on the old platform, but my IT guy
is telling me that the '07 version will work fine, including all of the
coding issues.

Has anyone else tried to upgrade from '97 to '07? Can I trust this guy?
The information in these files is quite sensitive and really guide much
of our reporting and workflow, it would be a disaster if we upgraded and
then had to pull them back in to reinstall the old version all over
again. It's 80+ associates and due to the configuration it's an all or
nothing approach.

Any feedback, positive or negative, would be appreciated!

Happy Holidays!

Dave

Not sure you can go straight from 97 to 2007. For several years now I
have developed a 97 app and then created a 2000 version of it for use on
our Terminal Servers. There were a few things that I had to fix when
going to 2000. That same 2000 file is now used by others with Access
2003 and 2007. I had a handful of bugs that showed up when 2003 users
first started using it. I had (and still have) a few more things I need
to fix for users with 2007.

So, will it convert with ZERO issues? Doubtful. Most of the things I
have encountered though were minor and none of them affected data
integrity.

 

[Maurice]

What you should be on the look-out for is mdb specific references. Suppose
you are referring to code which calls some mdb that should be upgraded to
accdb. Furthermore if you have some specific code used from any of the
developer handbooks (97) that might give you some issues because that's mdb
specific. I know because i'm in the middle of converting a 97 to a 2007
mdb-sql version. Lots of issues because the previous developer used a lot of
functionality from books (cd material). What flabbergasted me the most is
that the speed of 2007 will be less than 97 how strange that may seem. So I'd
say create a test environment and see what the findings are. Don't forget the
references and references to built-in menubars if there are any. Last but not
least the switchboard manager might give some issues in some cases...

Should you try it? Yes, please do there will be additonal functionality you
can invoke in your app that is not available in 97.

hth

 

[David]

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it!

Happy Holidays!

 

[David W. Fenton]

So, will it convert with ZERO issues?

I just did a conversion of an A97 app that dates to 1997. It is
running on Access 2003 and 2002, but I converted only to A2K, as I
don't use any of the features specifict to the later two versions.

It was the most harrowing conversion I've ever done, mostly because
of issues in regard to changes in the order in which Access loads
and unloads objects. It took me some time troubleshoot one problem
with a function used to determine if a form is open standalone or as
an embedded subform. When the app was closing down and closed the
parent form of the subform that called my IsSubForm() function, it
crapped out because there wasn't any parent form there any more, but
it still existed. Things happened in a different order in A97.
Fortunately, for other purposes I already had a global Boolean flag
that indicated the app was in shutdown mode, so I just caused the
IsSubForm() code to exit if that global was true. This fixed the
problem except for cases in which the orderly shutdown code did not
get called (the only situation where this happens if is you view the
database window and close it by clicking the X -- this is something
*I* do all the time, but my end users don't, so it resolved the
issue).

I had many other issues with timing of this type, and it was quite
difficult to sort out because the app is actually pretty damned
complicated. Much of it had to do with the order in which events
were triggered after a forced save of the data.

I'd previously encountered the problem with queries that included
references to controls on forms and knew to add parameters to those,
but that wasn't even relevant in this app, as this app has been in
continuous development and already reflected my changeover in
methods so that I no longer use form control references in saved
QueryDefs.

 

[Linq Adams via AccessMonster.com]

You might want to check out Allen Browne's site

http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html

and scroll to the bottom to the section marked "Upgrading."

And in case you haven't figured it out, you IT people are full of it!

 

[Chris O'C via AccessMonster.com]

Your IT guy doesn't know what he's talking about. If your org stayed in
Access 97 because of upgrade issues with Access 2000 and 2003, you can expect
to stay in Access 97 because Access 2007 will create more new issues. Access
2007 doesn't magically fix the Jet 4 issues, library issues, record sorting
issues, etc.

That said, the conversion issues aren't insurmountable. Post them here and
we'll help you fix them.

Your IT dept is doing your org a disservice if they demand upgrading all or
none of the pcs without first testing a few individual pcs to find and fix
what breaks.

Chris
Microsoft MVP