Access Report Functions

[Karl Krelove]

I'm having strage problems with Access 2000. FWIW, I carry my database (.mdb)
around on a flash drive from computer to computer. Every so often, when I try
to run one of my reports, I find that some of the functions like left$,
right$, date$ suddenly don't work on the Win98SE or Win2K machines I use. My
WinXP machine at home never has a problem. When this happens, if I create a
new data file and simply import everything from the old one, everything works
again.

What could explain this?

Thanks in advance.

Karl Krelove

 

[Douglas J Steele]

Your References collection could be getting messed up.

References problems can be caused by differences in either the location or
file version of certain files between the machine where the application was
developed, and where it's being run (or the file missing completely from the
target machine). Such differences are common when new software is installed.

On the machine(s) where it's not working, open any code module. Select Tools
| References from the menu bar. Examine all of the selected references.

If any of the selected references have "MISSING:" in front of them, unselect
them, and back out of the dialog. If you really need the reference(s) you
just unselected (you can tell by doing a Compile All Modules), go back in
and reselect them.

If none have "MISSING:", select an additional reference at random, back out
of the dialog, then go back in and unselect the reference you just added. If
that doesn't solve the problem, try to unselect as many of the selected
references as you can (Access may not let you unselect them all), back out
of the dialog, then go back in and reselect the references you just
unselected. (NOTE: write down what the references are before you delete
them, because they'll be in a different order when you go back in)

 

[Karl Krelove]

I wasn't sure what you meant by References. There aren't any modules in my
database - I'm calling the functions directly in the data source window of a
text box in the report itself. But when I looked up References in the help
files I found that they are somehow connected with ADO.

One thing about my setup I didn't mention that may turn out to be
significant is that I own Office 2000 Professional, but when I upgraded
recently to Office 2003, I only bought the Educators' version, which doesn't
include Access, so I left Access 2000 on my home machine, which is where I'm
doing most of the development. Occasionally now when I try to do certain
things in Access, I get a series of dialogs about trying to set up ADO and
wanting the Office 2000 disks. I have cancelled out of these dialogues
because I'm afraid following through will corrupt the Office 2003 programs
that I have installed. I haven't upgraded to Access 2003 separately because
at the school where I work I'm still running Office 2000 with no prospect of
an upgrade soon, and I'm not sure if Access 2000 at school will read Access
2003 files I create at home (it does handle my Word 2003 and Excel 2003
files). But could this version conflict (and the problem Access is having
with Active Data Objects) have something to do with the problem I originally
asked about?

Thanks,

Karl

 

[Douglas J Steele]

Even if you haven't written any modules, Access still relies on other files
to contain some of its functionality. This is a pretty fundamental concept
in Windows: by doing this, you avoid having to program a whole lot of common
functionality into each application. While you may think you're using Access
functions, many of them come from elsewhere (the ones you specifically
mention come from the VBA library). Whenever Access needs to use one of
those functions, it looks through all of the referenced files to find what
it needs. If there's a problem with any of the referenced files, Access can
get confused. It's extremely common for the VBA functions to stop working,
and rarely (if ever) is the actual reference that causes the problem the VBA
reference.

Go into the VB Editor and follow the advice I gave below.