Best practice for deleting a table that link to historic data

[azncuttie]

Hi all, I am working on a project to revise a database that was built previously by another person. One of the table will be retire. What is the best way to do this so that I don't lose all the historical data that was linked to the table but make sure it will not be used going forward. The following up question is the data was originally imported from an Excel spreadsheet where some of the fields was a numeric value, and later switched to a string value in Access to denormalized all the tables. Should I imported all the data to a new Access database or fix all the bugs?

Thank you so much.

[June7]

Don't really understand the issue. Do you mean you want to reorganize the data into new structure?

[azncuttie]

Not reorganize all data into new structure but just some if that makes sense? Let say if you are given a database that are not function correctly to the changes that users want. I am wondering if it is worth to fix things the database or build a new one and import the data.

[June7]

Depends on your situation. When we decided to build a new db in Access to replace dBaseIV app, I archived old data into Access tables that held to the original structure. I built new structure for data going forward. We seldom have need to look at the archived data but I did build a special interface for that purpose. For the few instances old and new data must be reviewed together, I build queries that can pull from both.

If you need all data to be homogenous, then should import into the new structure.

[azncuttie]

Thank you for your quick response. I am very new to db administration and VBA code in MS Access. There are problems with table relationships, and the VBA codes that I need to fix in order for it to function correctly for the users as well as pulling reports. My strength is more on querying and building reports than a db administrator so I have to learn a lot from different sources that not always easy to know what the best practice is. Also, there are 2 forms in the database now: one for create new record, and the other for editing/delete the record. Would it make more sense to combine them into one form with 2 different buttons because they are linked from the same tables.

[June7]

I use one form for multiple purposes.

[azncuttie]

That was what I thought. Great, thank you so much.