form will not open

[NetworkTrade]

a form was working fine

modified it by adding some unbound textboxes

noticed that when I selected Form View it did not go back to form view from
design view....

saved, closed....and now it will not open in either design or form
view...seems completely gone.....

compressed/repaired the db file....no change

imported the same form from an old version....double checked that it worked
fine, opened, etc....made the same changes of adding unbound text boxes...and
once again the same symptom...would not go to form view from design view and
now once closed will not open....

have never seen this before....Access2003

 

[SteveM]

Try doing a SaveAsText/LoadFromText on the form.

I had this problem some time ago with a form I was modifying for a client.
She had a field in her table named Date and a textbox named Date on the form.
Of course, she was having problems using the Date() function. Even when I
removed the field the function would still fail. Did a compact repair,
decompile - no luck, SaveAsText/LoadFromText solved the problem.

If you need help with that, post back.

Steve

 

[NetworkTrade]

I appreciate your input. I also used your suggestion's key words to search
further on this site for more discussions on this - which was quite helpful.

I'll write what has happened - not so much for you as for other users that
might read this in their search for a solution:

Your suggestion would not go - Access would bomb when I attempted to do the
SaveAsText. Don't know why.

I did the decompile db fix as recommended by AllenBrowne.com and that also
made no change.

I could import an old version of the form - it would work...but as soon as I
made a design change to the form i.e. adding a new unbound text box....it
would have this same freeze and become nonfunctional. In hindsight, it is
probable I was importing a buggy form and so repeating this was never going
to help.

I created a new database and imported everything but this bad form - but in
my case I found most all of the queries to be broken. This opened a new
issue; it made me realize that this might be related to my prior work
manipulating the back end tables. And I believe that this was possibly the
genesis of the problem. Even though the end result of my table
manipulations was the same named tables - I found that the relationships were
to the old tables. I delinked these and relinked them correctly.....

What this left me was my original application working fine except for one
form that would not work.....or a new imported version of my application
where all the queries are broken....

I decided it would be less painful to work with my original application -
and to rebuild the form. In my case I had another form that was very similar
- in particular it had equivalent subforms in it....so I copied this and
modified it rather than build from scratch. And this has worked fine....I've
made the new changes I needed to and all has been fine.

What made the form go bad - I don't know. I could not fix. Whether or not
my manipulations of the back end tables contributed - I can not say. I
welcome any further input from readers as I am always trying to know Access
as well as possible.

 

[SteveM]

Great! Glad you solved th problem.

If you take another look on AllenBrowne.com you will see he has a very good
section about how Access can become corrupt and things to avoid.

In my experience, it is a good habit to do a SaveAsText/LoadFromText when
you have made significant changes to a form/report etc. It's also a good
idea to decompile your project after significant changes and especially prior
to deployment.
You don't have to, I have just found that this habit stops me getting the
annoying little problems that I used to get from time to time.

You should never change tables that are 'live'. Always do your work on a
copy and fully test before you deploy. Even when modifying your front-end, it
is better to be linked to a copy of your BE, rather than the live one, until
fully tested.

Steve