Access 2 Files: "not a valid Win32 application?"

[Guest]

I created several databases a few years ago with Access 2. One I've updated
frequently and have been able to save as an Excel file. I believe the saved
database is so corrupt (although it opens with Access 2) and saved it as the
Excel file because I assume I'll have to rebu8ild it (forms, reports, etc)
when I convert to Office 2007 which I have in hand.

Three of the other databases (which I've not accessed in probably two to
three years) I can't open or export to Excel and I get this message:
"....mdb is not a valid Win32 application." Are these datbases lost forever
or are they recoverable in some form?

 

[Alex Dybenko]

Hi,
what do you mean save as an Excel file? you can export some table to Excel,
but you can't save Access database as Excel

--
Best regards,
___________
Alex Dybenko (MVP)
http://accessblog.net
http://www.PointLtd.com

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

I created several databases a few years ago with Access 2. One I've updated
frequently and have been able to save as an Excel file. I believe the saved
database is so corrupt (although it opens with Access 2) and saved it as the
Excel file because I assume I'll have to rebu8ild it (forms, reports, etc)
when I convert to Office 2007 which I have in hand.

An A2.0 database can be converted to A2007. You might have to use a
version of Access in the middle such as A97 or A2000. There might be
a few "interesting" problems. Such as in A2.0 you could have a module
name the same as a function/subroutine name. And that you have to fix
up in A2.0. And there will be other problems in VBA code but not a
big deal.

Three of the other databases (which I've not accessed in probably two to
three years) I can't open or export to Excel and I get this message:
"....mdb is not a valid Win32 application." Are these datbases lost forever
or are they recoverable in some form?

Now that's an interesting message to get when you click on the MDB.
What happens when you start up A2.0 and then open the MDB from there?

Tony

--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
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Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/

 

[Guest]

On a second set of attempts yesterday, I remembered that I'd attempted to
open the mbd databases by clicking on them in Windows explorer (normally, an
alternative way to open a file). I subsequently opened Access 2 itself,
opened the dabases directly from there and successfully exported them each
as Excel files to my backup external hard drive.

I now have installed Access 2007 as part of my installation of Office 2007,
and, somewhat surprisingly, the databases opened in Access 2007, after my
agreement with the dialogue box that said the databases would be converted
forever and no longer readable by earlier Access versions. I've lost just
one query-the one on which I've been drafting some modifications for my
report-but I think I can modify the most recent query to reflect the later
design.

The only issue now, and it's a minor but slightly annoying one, is that I'd
like to "bold" a few individual records in the database, but not entire
fields, rather than trying to group records (a technique I've never
mastered), but I can live with this shortcoming. (The Access "help" file
does not seem to address formatting at the record level).