Office 2003 SP3 causes problems in Access 2003

[Kevin Seerup]

I installed SP3 on three PCs and have had to do a System Restore on all three.

SP3 causes some columns of my combo boxes in Access 2003 to appear as all
spaces. This makes it very difficult to identify the correct values to
select. I haven't found a common theme but I have tried in three
applications with a mixture of SQL 2000 and Access 2003 backend databases.

--
Kevin Seerup
GoalMaker Pty Ltd
http://www.goalmaker.com

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[Carlos CC]

I'm having the same issue with several PC's and did not found a way to
correct it using SP3.
On multi-column comboxes, the items in the bounded column are not visible.
On single column combo or list boxes, the list grows as if there where items,
but there isn't anything written in it.

So far, this issue seams to be directly related to SP3, since it was
installed in Vista (x32) and XP with and without Themes (some said it might
work without it) with the same result.

Workaround: Removing Office 2003 and re-installing it with SP2 and all
updates until SP3 did the trick for now (or System Restore ).

Office 2007 does not have this issue.

Carlos CC
ITN - Portugal

 

[Brossyg]

In Access 2003, I have a Combo box in a form with one of the columns
formatted Yes/No (the table the data comes from is also yes/no data). When
the Combo Box was dropped-down, the column correctly showed "Yes" or
"No"...until I installed Office 2003 SP3. Now, the column shows "-1" or "0"
now matter that the format property is set to "Yes/No".

Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution?

Brossyg

 

[CurtainMary]

Hello, since i installed SP3, Combo dropdown lists are giving me problems
just like Brossyg in Yes/No field.
Also multiple field dropdowns show blank values but when selected the
correct values are displayed. Arrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhh.
Can't MS do better than that??
CurtainMary

 

[Brossyg]

It gets worse...in a combobox, if a number is formatted as currency, but the
dollar amount is an even dollar such as $72.00, it displays in the combobox
as $72 with no zeros.

 

[CurtainMary]

Hi, in another thread I discovered that Allen Browne MVP said that the bug
problems are due to formatting. If there is formatting (eg > for capital
letters) the columns will show empty.

 

[Brossyg]

My combo boxes are formatted as they should be, either Yes/No or Currency.
SP3 broke them both. I want MS to fix it and issue a patch because thier
product, Access, no longer works as it is supposed to.

 

[Spiky]

We have had similar problems. With combo boxes try putting a distinct into
the sql statement, that seemed to cure our problems, at least so far.

The checkbox issues seems more difficult, in ADPs for us, it was caused by
having bit fields, which are not booleans. Changing the binding so the
underlying field was a signed int made them work again.

Of course it did mean lots of little changes, ** groans a lot **. But if it
has got to work then...

 

[jwe13]

Hi, in another thread I discovered that Allen Browne MVP said that the bug
problems are due to formatting. If there is formatting (eg > for capital
letters) the columns will show empty.

 

[Todd Tharp]

Has anyone heard of a resolution to this problem? SP3 is uninstallable
and I have a few end users who have it installed. List boxes with
columns containing currency values truncate the decimals and remove the
dollar symbol. Machines without SP3 display properly. The row source
pulls that field straight from the table and gets the formatting from
the table.

This forum is the only thing google returned regarding this problem.
Please email: eng.ufl.edu (todd ~at- ) if anyone has any information on
a solution to this problem, please contact me.

 

[niobium]

Rather unfortunately MS has not indicated a time-table for a solution
yet. Some folks have suggested changing bit fields to smallint or
similar to handle the signed/unsigned problem (and using Yes/No combo
boxes or Option Frames where you can set the value explicitly, rather
than relying on checkbox defaults). There's a KB article for this, but
the work-arounds listed are nothing system-wide implementable: they
involve things like "click on another record" and the like. The
article is here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943967

You can't uninstall SP3 but you CAN deinstall Office 2003, then
reinstall, then use the downloads page to patch to SP2. I am in the
process of trying to find out how far I can patch after SP2 (which is
from 2005, unfortunately...) to not hit the bug but get as many
security fixes as possible. It's hard to tell.

The good news is simply uninstalling Office 2003 will not negate your
activation; that will remain in place. If you have remote clients I
realize that's cold comfort.

Someone else mentioned in another thread that a good list of known SP3
bugs is here:

http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html

Good luck.


--Nb41