Lost Records

[Vince]

As I was swiching from Word to Access, to make an field
entry in a list for about 60 records, Access hung up and
after trying to quit, I used the XP task manager to end
Access. Upon restarting, only 27 records were left, and
those contained old data which appeared to be from a old
backup I made in October. I used a different .mdb file
name for the backup, but the list and form names were the
same inside the .mdb as I was using when over half of the
records were lost. (They are not being hidden due to a
filter.)

FYI: I have about 35 fields in each record.

All of this data has taken months to enter and most of it
can not be found anywhere else, so can anyone offer any
help, or tell me how to turn off the damn automatic saving
Access does??

Regards and Happy New Year,
(e-mail address removed)

 

[John Vinson]

As I was swiching from Word to Access, to make an field
entry in a list for about 60 records, Access hung up and
after trying to quit, I used the XP task manager to end
Access. Upon restarting, only 27 records were left, and
those contained old data which appeared to be from a old
backup I made in October. I used a different .mdb file
name for the backup, but the list and form names were the
same inside the .mdb as I was using when over half of the
records were lost. (They are not being hidden due to a
filter.)

FYI: I have about 35 fields in each record.

All of this data has taken months to enter and most of it
can not be found anywhere else, so can anyone offer any
help, or tell me how to turn off the damn automatic saving
Access does??

You can't turn off automatic saving other than by doing a fair bit of
violence to the database (e.g. invoking Access security to prevent
users from updating any table whatsoever, and writing VBA code to
selectively update those records that you want updated) - a LOT of
work.

If you haven't done anything with the database since the incident, try
contacting Peter Miller at http://www.pksolutions.com for his highly
regarded database salvage service.

And... you now know why current, frequent backups are considered
absolutely essential. I'm sorry it was such a painful lesson!

 

[Guest]

Thanks John W. Vinson,

I suspected as much. Now I must manually save each day's
work to a different file name, to have the data backup
needed like is done in some operations systems. I guess a
VB routine could do the job, or perhaps another database.
I never had a problem with dBase, and I wonder just how
many other MS Access victims are out there??

But thanks for the link John --- I'll check it out. . .

(e-mail address removed)

 

[John Vinson]

Thanks John W. Vinson,

I suspected as much. Now I must manually save each day's
work to a different file name, to have the data backup
needed like is done in some operations systems. I guess a
VB routine could do the job, or perhaps another database.
I never had a problem with dBase, and I wonder just how
many other MS Access victims are out there??

But thanks for the link John --- I'll check it out. . .

ummmmm...

HUH!?

I did NOT suggest that nor anything like that.

I'm suggesting instead that you save the .mdb file (the entire
database) daily (or at whatever interval makes restoring from backup a
mild annoyance rather than a disaster). This backup can be done using
your operating system's scheduler utility at a time when nobody is in
the database, or manually, or however you prefer.

 

[Vince Putman]

John,

I did not say you said anything at all, so please take no offense nor defense. I think Access lost me my data due to a flaw in its code as documented in the MS knowledge base, ACC2002 or Q295217. And I said, in effect, I would like to setup a iteration saving function so I would always have a copy to fall back on, and I know VB could do it. I hate it when MS makes decisions for me by forcing their auto-save function, especially while in a single user environment.

I do not have a large networked system with a timed backup setup her at home yet, and I prefer to power down my computers at night. But, again please accept my thanks for your original reply --- it's the only one I got on this forum.

(e-mail address removed)