Access crashing

[lefty2cox]

I have a database I'm in the process of building. Everything was going fine until one day I launched the database, which loads my main, unbound form. When I click on any button or control on the form, access closes. The next time I launch, I get a message that says "access couldn't start the last time" and gives my options for safe mode. This happens over and over. I can open and access the other objects in my database...other forms, tables, etc. But can't click on a control on the main form. I can stop it by making a change to the main form before trying to use any control. For instance, I can launch access, go to design view on the main form, add a button say...that does nothing, save the form and then everything works as it should. This trick won't work unless I make a change. If I just go to design view on the main form, save it and then go to form view and try a control, it crashes.



I imagine the database is corrupted? I'm a novice to intermediate user.

Thank you.

[lefty2cox]

I should also add...every so often when I launch after the crash, I get a save window as it launches. Which seems weird to me.

[Edgar]

I deal with those things by isolating the problem, which is usually a form. So, change the name of your main form, create another main form with nothing in it and start adding controls until you see what could be the problem. Chances are, you'll have a new main form with no problems at the end of the process, and then you'll be able to delete the offending one. If that doesn't work then yeah, the Access gnomes will come and get you if you don't act quick.

So it's best to copy all of your code somewhere safe, like the notepad, also all of your data in spreadsheets, possibly take screenshots of the forms and in short: back it all up.
Then you can investigate what's going on, if you delay those things and your database becomes corrupted it's going to make it all harder.

Once it's backed up, I make a copy of the original and work on the copy. Then:
1. Start a new database from scratch
2. Disable autonaming before adding anything
3. Copy a table, test the database works fine.
4. Copy another table and test and so on.
5. Then do the same for queries.
6. Then forms.
7. Problems are usually in the forms, and since you add them one by one, you'll see the offending one quickly.

You'll soon realize where the problem is. I've seen my databases crash because some event or control didn't exist or wasn't properly set up, but there could be something else.

[mike60smart]

Hi
You can try creating a New Blank database and then Import everything from the original.

[lefty2cox]

Thank you. I must not have subscribed to my own post because I wasn't notified of these replies. I just logged in to check and found them. I appreciate it. What I ended up doing was working backward. Took me a while to remember the order I had done things in but once I did, I just started undoing stuff and stubbled upon the problem.

On of the last things I did before I noticed the problem was to add some code to the click event of the form header to hide the ribbon. I commented that code out and the problem went away. I appreciate the tips though. I've only been working on this one a couple hours a day for a couple weeks so it wasn't super complex yet.

My back up plan up until now was that whenever I started developing, I would first back it up. But I ended up getting carried away and did a bunch of stuff. So I would have lost all of that, which would have sucked because I struggle figuring everything out. Not sure if I would have been able to do it again.