Database properties, relationship diagrams, menus , and import/export specifications can only be backed up to another Access database or documented by printing. To produce a report on the database properties and relationship diagrams as a form of backup:
Open a database.
Choose Tools ˜ Analyze ˜ Documentor.
Select the Current Database tab and select both Properties and Relationships. This action will produce a report that shows both database properties (see Figure 5-16) and descriptions of the relationships.
Figure 5-16: The database documentor output shows important database properties.
An additional way to back up the table relationships is to print out the relationship model diagram. To find this option:
Open the back-end database where the table relationships are stored.
Open the relationships window.
Choose File ˜ Print Relationships.
The output from this menu command is shown in Figure 5-17. This option became available in Access 2000, but a download wizard was available from Microsoft for the same purpose in Access 97.
If you import or export data to text files regularly, you can save the definition of the responses that you used for that work into an import/export specification. These specifications can take a while to re-create if lost. If you have created menus and toolbars in your application (discussed in detail in Chapter 7) or relationships between tables, then you will wonder how to back up or move that information around. The only practical way to transfer these items is to use the Import Objects wizard.
To open the Import Objects wizard, choose File ˜ Get External Data ˜ Import. To import the relationships, menus, and import/export specifications, click the Options button and then select the three check boxes in the lower left of the wizard (as shown in Figure 5-18).
Select the Relationships check box to include the relationships defined between the tables and queries you import. It is important to note that the only relationships transferred will be those common to the tables that you are importing. Select the Menus and Toolbars check box to import all custom menus and toolbars in the database. If a custom toolbar or menu with the same name exists in the current database, that toolbar won't be imported. Select the Import/Export Specs check box to include all import and export specifications from the database you are importing.
Note | It is quite acceptable to use the Import command from the Access main menu to import all objects into a blank database. This procedure will form quite an acceptable form of backup. Chapter 9 discusses in detail why the Import command is one of the bigger weaknesses in the Access protection mechanisms. |