"#Name?" glitch in access, missing records & unsaved changes

[cs1020]

Hello,

I maintain a database that tracks student information. It's used by several people, and is split into a front- and back-end. Yesterday two users both encountered a glitch where every field for every record displayed "#Name?". They both closed the database, and when it was reopened it seemed fine. This morning we discovered that several of the records they were working with have completely disappeared, and some of the changes that were made disappeared.



-The deleted records are all from a query that one user sorted and then exported to excel. About 20 records went missing.
-The records whose changes weren't saved were from a different form.

These are trusted users; no one deleted the records. My best guess is that something happened in Access simultaneously for both users -the #Name? error that resulted in selected records being deleted and others not updated. Has this happened to anyone else? What is the root cause of this problem?

I have a trusted backup, but before restoring it I'd like to know how exactly this happened so that I can make the proper changes to the back-up before moving forward.

I'd really appreciate any help or feedback from folks! Thanks in advance.

[RuralGuy]

Do all of the users have their own copy of the FE on their own PC as they should? Are there any wireless links in the system. Access does not play well with wireless.

[orange]

Sounds like corruption. I'd try Compact and repair.As RuralGuy asks ---wireless involved? Any hiccup on wireless can corrupt Access.

[CJ_London]

cross posted here

http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/...d.php?t=289024

[cs1020]

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses! We all work from the same front end, it's located on a shared drive that we all have access to. Should I create seperate FEs for all users?

We're not working off wireless, but it would make sense to me if this all stems from a temporary disconnect from the server or something like that.
I'm going to try to compact & restore to see if that helps; otherwise I'll just have to restore the backups and manually reenter the data.

[orange]

In the typical set up you'd have a copy of the Frontend on each user's PC. The backend is on a server.
Each user has his/her own copy of the FE. SEE this

[RuralGuy]

Everyone in the same FE is a formula for corruption.

[cs1020]

Thank you for this advice! I've seen it on another campus's database, but I thought since we were on a shared network we wouldn't need it.

Compact & restore didn't save the missing data, so once I restore from my backup, I'll create separate FEs for all users.

[Bulzie]

You lost connection to a linked table for some reason. Is your BE SQL or Access?

[cs1020]

It's Access, I assume - I haven't learned how to work with SQL yet.

[Micron]

Everyone in the same FE is a formula for corruption.
I know this is the general mantra and I won't argue that it can be risky, but I can say that I've created 3 such db setups which have about 20 users and have never crashed or corrupted while I was there. I retired but still see the guys occasionally and they report that all are working fine. My reason(s) for sharing the FE were based on observations of how running a batch file on that network always resulted in FE replacement failures due to people not closing theirs, thus continuing to work on an outdated version. That was before I knew I could prompt an FE replacement based on version comparison at startup (which I learned of before I retired, but it was too late and frankly, it didn't seem necessary to rebuild given the success). I will admit though, that it takes more thought when designing. Imagine flushing a temp table after performing an operation without considering the user id. Concurrent users would have a problem with that, I imagine.

That being said, I would not continue the approach going forward - if there is ever a need again. I guess I'm just saying that so far, so good (they've been in operation for about 6 years).