I just realized that our database is no longer saving ANYTHING!!

[coleen]

I have been entering many new members, payments, dates, etc. into our database over the last couple of months and I just realized that none of this was saved!!! I have no idea what is going on??? Can anyone help please??

[June7]

This is an old, previously functional db? What has happened recently that could have caused behavior change? Is the database a split design? Is there more than one copy of backend?

[orange]

What sort of management procedures do you have? Do you do regular backups? Regular statistics or reports?
How did you determine "last couple of months"?

[Renaud]

If anything, this should serve ass a warning to all: you must have a regular database backup scheme. It cannot be stressed enough.

The easiest and least etechy thing you can do is to program an regular alarm/calendar event on your mobile phone for you do manually make a copy of your database.
So if you know you are at work every day at 9h00, then set an event to remind you to make the backup every day or every 2 days, or every week at least.

Of course, a better solution is to use the Windows Task Scheduler to set up a task to perform a backup on a regular basis. Then you need to use a calendar event/alarm to remind you to check regularly that the backup has indeed been performed.

If your data is worth anything, spend some time to thing about backups. It's not a matter of if you will need it, it's a matter of when you will need it.

On top of backups, I would recommend compacting the database regularly as well.
What I do is make a daily backup of the database to a zip file, then once that it done, I compact the database.
If something goes wrong with the compact process, then I still have the backup.

Compacting regularly will prevent minor issues from pilling up and blowing in your face one day.
A database can become corrupted in many subtle ways that are not always obvious. By compacting the database you will ensure that it stays at an optimum size for the data it contain (instead of becoming very large very quickly) and that any minor issues that could result in data corruption are repaired early.

Compacting is fairly easy: just create a batch file with the following (you will have to change the paths to match your specific environment or course):

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\msaccess.exe" "E:\MoveIt\db\Phoenix-be.accdb" /compact

The key here is the /compact command line parameter that tells Access to just operate on the given database. Access will just open, perform the compact and repair operation and close.

Now, regarding your issue, there are many reasons you database may not be saving your work:

• it's read-only, possibly because it's set that way in its file properties or because the filesystem does not give you the rights to write to the database file.
• it's corrupted, in which case, make a backup and try to perform a compact and repair.

Try to open the database tables directly and enter data manually in the records. Are the changes you make being saved? Could it be an issue with your front-end (assuming you have split the database into backend/front-end).

You will have to give us more information about your setup for us to help you beyond that.