Chapter 5: Backing up and Recovering Your Databases

Overview

If you are involved with a multi- user Access database, you must learn how to back up the database properly. This chapter shows you how to check whether everyone has logged off, how to log off all users, how to back up a database properly, how to back up information while people are using the database, and then, when that fateful day comes, how to recover your information. As you progress through these topics, you will learn a good use for XML and even find out which objects in your database take up the most space.

The download material for this chapter includes forms and Visual Basic for Application (VBA) examples, as follows :

• Functions to find out whether anyone is using the database.

• A form to shut down the database at a set time.

• A form that will safely back up a database by using the compact process.

• A form that makes it easy for your users to compact their databases.

• A form to unload all tables to comma-delimited format.

• Two different ways to unload all tables to XML.

• A form to back up all objects to text.

• Special VBA recovery files that the text export procedures write automatically so that you can easily recover tables and objects.

Note  

To find the demonstration material, open the download database for your version of Access ”for example, grMAP2002.mdb ”and select Chapter 5. Before running any samples that involve data, you may need to relink the tables to the Northwind database on your computer.