Changing Table and Field Names in Active Access 2000 DB

[Chris]

I want to change the names of tables and their fields throughout two
databases.

About seven years ago, I inherited two Access 3 databases. Shortly
thereafter, I upgraded both databases to Access 7. Of course, these VB rich
DB's required some recoding. In 2001, I upgraded the two databases to Access
2000.

The problem is that I have grandfathered in the original dBase author's
naming conventions, which, as you might imagine, include all capitals and
cryptic words of no more than eight characters. I want to revamp the DB's,
changing data types here and there and employ the Reddick naming convention
throughout.

The catch is that the databases are live and they have links between each
other. The databases are also split and linked -- you know the 'ol _be.mdb
thing. I've been playing around with a dummy DB but cannot figure out an
easy way to do it. Does anyone have any suggestions, URL's, book titles that
can help me out?

Chris Courson, Tampa, FL

 

[Allen Browne]

Chris, my suggestion would be NOT to change the names of the fields. I don't
see the benefits justifying the considerable work involved in ensuring all
references are correctly updated, relations rebuilt, queries, forms,
reports, macros, and code correctly modified.

You might consider setting the Caption of the fields to whatever you think
is a better description. The caption is picked up on any new forms and
reports you build.

 

[Terry]

Yeh! I use the RickWorld Find & REplace It is a fraction
of the cost of Speed Ferret and does a very good job. I
tried Speed Ferret and it is nice but offers too much
information. I got it for exactly the same reason you have.

I was able to standardise a database which had table names
like Bus: From/To and there were a lot of
interdependancies on the names

Without the Find & Replace it would have taken me days. I
did in in just over half a day & it worked straight off.

DO DO DO make a verified backup before atarting though.
Cheers
Terry