wearyphilosopher
asked on
Corrupt entries in Memo Fields
I work with a fairly large (10.5 MB) Access database, which recently went completely haywire. After a great deal of myself and my colleagues tearing our collective hair out, we discovered that the reason behind our main problem (one of the make-table queries wouldn't work), was one single corrupt record in one of our main tables.
The error we got when we tried to run the Query was the one about 'The Microsoft Jet Database utility halted the operation, because you and someone else are trying to change the same data at the same time'.
The same error comes up when you click in a Memo field of this record on the main table, which contains the '#error' alert. Plus, if you run a query that excludes the record, it will work fine.
But we can't alter the record, we can't delete the record, we can't do anything at all really without this error coming up.
The first question is... how on earth do I repair the database? How do I expunge the corrupt record when I can't get access to it?
The second question is, why? Apparently, this error occurs when there is 'bad data' in a memo or OLE field. But what is 'bad data' exactly? And how did it get there?
Hope someone can help!
The error we got when we tried to run the Query was the one about 'The Microsoft Jet Database utility halted the operation, because you and someone else are trying to change the same data at the same time'.
The same error comes up when you click in a Memo field of this record on the main table, which contains the '#error' alert. Plus, if you run a query that excludes the record, it will work fine.
But we can't alter the record, we can't delete the record, we can't do anything at all really without this error coming up.
The first question is... how on earth do I repair the database? How do I expunge the corrupt record when I can't get access to it?
The second question is, why? Apparently, this error occurs when there is 'bad data' in a memo or OLE field. But what is 'bad data' exactly? And how did it get there?
Hope someone can help!
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ASKER
We have run this problem by our own IT support unit, but this is a lot clearer than the feedback they have given us! We've had a lot of odd network goings on of late (new and replaced hardware, heavy network traffic and bad slow-downs), which might explain how the 'abnormal disconnection' you mentioned occurred.
It's extraordinary to think one single corrupt record can bring an entire database crashing to a halt like this, but luckily there are experts such as yourself to help us along when they do.
Thanks for your time.
Andrew.