Access lock bug - Workaround?

[Ian Smith]

Can anyone offer suggestions to get around an Access lock bug? Here’s the deal.

In several places in my application, I have memo fields displayed in two or
three line text fields. The data is usually much more than two lines long, so
when a user clicks on a field, I throw up a form with a large editing window
to allow the user to read and edit the form in its entirety. With moderate
lengths of text, it works like a charm

The problem is that if the memo field is lengthy (greater than 1k or so),
Access fails to properly release the lock held by the underlying form and
when the user attempts to leave the editing form, he encounters his own lock
and can not update.

I’ve tried all sorts of work-arounds. My current attempt is to bring up the
editing form modal and have it put a blank subform in place of the subform
containing the two line text display. That eliminates the error message, but
if the data is lengthy, it still doesn’t get updated.

I’m thinking I need a fresh approach and am begging for suggestions.

 

[Sergey Poberezovskiy]

Try to unbound the popup form, pass the memo field in and out as a string and
then update the textbox on the main form that shows the memo with that string.

HTH

 

[TC]

What is actually happening that causes you to say that "Access fails to
properly release the lock held by the underlying form"?

TC

 

[Ian Smith]

If you have a field displayed in a form, then open up the same field in
another form, Access attempts to release the lock on the first instance so
that the active form can have it. If the field is short, it works. If it is
lengthy, Access fails to fully release the lock and the user gets an error
message saying that the field can not be updates because another user on the
same machine has it locked.

It's a bug I've been aware of for years, and seen discussions of in the
forums.

Sergey,

Thanks for the suggestion. That's actually the approach I was considering'
I'll try it.