msaccess.exe remains open

[Cosimo]

Last Friday, I installed MS Office Professional Plus 2016 on a Windows 10 PC, after first using an MS tool for removing other Office versions.



I then used Access 2016 to convert an Access mdb database (front and back end files) in 2003 format to the accdb Access 2016 format.

I fixed a few issues (like inserting the DAO prefix where it was missing), I also linked the front end to the back end, and all seemed to work great the day of the installation.

Then the next day, I again opened Access 2016 to make some minor remaining adjustments to my converted database (no code changes, just adjusting colors and tab sizes). Again, everything was fine.

Then Sunday when I opened Access 2016 again, I encountered a problem with MSAccess.exe not closing.

After trying all kinds of things to fix and diagnose the problem, here's what I found:

If I try to open Access 2016 by clicking on my front end accdb in File Explorer, it fails to open. The laccdb temporary file is created, but the Access application Window is not visible on my monitor, nor is the Access application button showing in my task bar.

When I attempt to restart the computer, I get a message saying I have an application open and do I really want to restart? When I cancel, I'm brought back to my desktop with just an Access message box visible that I designed to alert the user they cannot close a form without using the close button I created for it. This form this close button is on, opens via an autoexec macro when ever the database mdb front end file is opened.

While this message box is displayed during the problem, nothing else about Access is visible: the normal Access window is not visible nor is there Access button visible on my task bar.

Nor is Access visible in task manager in the "Processes" tab; but MSAccess.exe is visible in the "Details" tab in task manager.

But I can open the Access application, however that results in two MSAccess.exe's being visible in the "Users" tab.

Also, the laccdb temporary file is still open for the accdb front end I was trying to close. Further, sometimes or always, the laccdb temorary file for the back end database also is still present (I say "sometimes or always" because I didn't know to check during all my tests until I discovered by accident that such a temp file is also created for a back end database as well as for the front end).

When I restart the PC completely, I can then open the accdb front end by clicking on it in File Explorer again.

Deleting the autoexec macro does allow me to open and close the accdb repeatedly without a problem by clicking on it in File Explorer.

BUT, once opened, if I open some forms and close those forms again, the problem recurs.

If I open Access first, then use the "Open" command from within the Access window, I can open the database and open and close the offending (forms), and then close the database again if after I close the form(s) I close everything by closing the Database application.

But if I first attempt to separately close the database file and then seek to close the application window, I find I cannot close the application window.

So far it seems that some code I'm running on some forms might be the problem.

And I'm thinking the reason I had no problem with his the first day after installing MS Office Professional Plus 2016 from a DVD, might be because the problem might have arisen after Office installed updates overnight. And that something in the coded I wrote disagrees with something in an update. (My guess is my code is wrong somewhere, i.e. not that an Access update is faulty)

Any ideas or questions would be appreciated!

[Welshgasman]

My bet would be on an update TBH.
Are you unable to remove the update and see if it works again?

[CJ_London]

What bitness of access 2016 did you install? 32 or 64?

[isladogs]

There is a very lengthy thread at Microsoft Tech Community which may relate to your issue.
Unfortunately, as yet there are no definitive causes or guaranteed workarounds that work for everybody
However, you may find something that works for you.

[Cosimo]

What bitness of access 2016 did you install? 32 or 64?

I installed Access from a Microsoft DVD (Office Professional Plus 2016) to a 64 bit PC.

The installation process offered no customization option.

But after the installation, the Access app says it's 32 bit.

[Cosimo]

There is a very lengthy thread at Microsoft Tech Community which may relate to your issue.
Unfortunately, as yet there are no definitive causes or guaranteed workarounds that work for everybody
However, you may find something that works for you.

Yes, thank you.

I discovered that tech community discussion late last night, and it's the closest description I've found on the net of what my problem is (it wasn't until I switched from Googling stuff like MS Access opens but fails to appear on screen and task bar to MSAccess.exe not closing, that I found it).


Closing MSAccess.exe in task manager does allow me to open the Access file again.

I haven't tried the part yet about adding it to a trusted folder thing. I may do that eventually, but since in actual use for my business I open and close my Access database only a few times a day, it wouldn't be too much of a pain to manually close the exe from task manager (I already pinned task manager to my task bar to make the process a little easier).

Since I hope only use Access 2016 until MS support for it ends a year from October, after which I plan to switch to a newer version of Access, which hopefully won't have this problem. So if necessary, I'm resigned to resorting to tax manager as a temporary solution if a real solution doesn't turn up between now and then.

This all assumes that I'm not hurting anything by closing MSAccess.exe from task manager whenever this problem occurs.

[Welshgasman]

Do the trusted folder ASAP.
You have nothing to lose doing so.

Fwiw I get that now and again with Everything.

[Welshgasman]

Do the trusted folder ASAP.
You have nothing to lose doing so.

Fwiw I get that now and again with Everything.

[Cosimo]

Do the trusted folder ASAP.
You have nothing to lose doing so.

Fwiw I get that now and again with Everything.

I tried that last night, and it did not work.

I tried it both with and without check marking the box to include all subfolders of the trusted folder on the trusted list.

[Cosimo]

There is a very lengthy thread at Microsoft Tech Community which may relate to your issue.
Unfortunately, as yet there are no definitive causes or guaranteed workarounds that work for everybody
However, you may find something that works for you.

Adding the folder the front end was in to the trusted list with including all the subfolders check box checked (the back end database is in a subfolder), still did not work.

[Cosimo]

Nothing seems to work except for opening task manager and closing msaccess.exe when I see it running in the background and/or in the details tab.

And as I mentioned elsewhere here a moment ago, adding the folders to trusted location didn't help.

I even tried to use docmd.quit and docmd.quit acQuitSaveAll and while that closed everything, the open database file and the Access application window and taskbar icon both, I still could not reopen the database file in an Access application window with an Access button on the task bar, until I used task manager to close msaccess.exe running in the background and/or in the list under the "details" tab of task manager.

That long discussion in the microsoft tech community about this problem and the discussion there has been going on for more than two years right up to this week.

[Cosimo]

There is a very lengthy thread at Microsoft Tech Community which may relate to your issue.
Unfortunately, as yet there are no definitive causes or guaranteed workarounds that work for everybody
However, you may find something that works for you.

I think a poster named Jon just posted the solution to my problem on the link to the Microsoft Tech Community you gave me.

He just posted the solution he found today.

He said that he was able to replicate the problem by setting the "Text Cursor Indicator" to "on" in Windows' "Ease of Access" settings.

As soon as I saw his post, I knew he had found it.

I kept racking my brain wondering what had happened. I closed Access and the, before going to bed, I fooled around with making the mouse cursor easier to spot when making quick notes to myself in notepad.

I disocvered the "Text Cursor Indicator" setting, and turned it on. It seemed helpful. Then I went to sleep.

It was first thing the next morning when I encountered the problem.

I remember thinking, "Everything was fine last night. All I did before turning on the PC this morning, was turn on that cursor thing. Surely, something so simple cannot be the problem; it it were, surely MS would have created a patch or something."

So I turned off the "Text Cursor Indicator" and now find MS Access is behaving normally again.

I hope that is that!

I was going to post on that MS Tech Community link that this for me, at least, seems to have solved my problem, but I was unable to log on to the site or create a new account (apparently I may already have two accounts for which I have forgotten the passwords).

And I haven't time to mess with it right now, because this simple problem has cost me all my spare time (and then some) since last weekend!

Thank you all for your help.

[isladogs]

Thanks for confirming.
I have just posted a link on the MSTechCommunity thread back to your post.

I have also tested the same Ease of Access Text Cursor indicator and can replicate the issue leaving multiple copies of MSACCESS.EXE in the task manager processes with that setting enabled.
Once I turned it off again, Access closed normally again without leaving a process hanging!

[Cosimo]

I have just posted a link on the MSTechCommunity thread back to your post.

That's great. Thank you. I wanted that that poster, "Jon," to know his idea seems to work for me.

I'm thinking that there are probably several different things that may cause this same problem, because some users seem to benefit from the trusted folder approach and/or from the docmd.quit approach, neither of which helped me.

One or two users said they traced the problem to having Grammarly installed on their devices (I am a paid subscriber to Grammarly, but I only installed Grammarly's extension to my Chrome and Edge browsers; I have not installed the Grammarly App on my PC anywhere else, and certainly have not installed it to my MS Office--when I want Grammarly's help with MS Word or anywhere else in Windows, I'll compose what I want to write on Grammarly's website, and then paste it into Word or my business email. I am still conservative about loading up my PCs with a lot of Apps), so I doubted that Grammarly was my problem.

Anyway, thanks again to Jon over there and you and everyone here!

[isladogs]

You're welcome.
The AccessForever blog team is currently considering the various reasons for this behaviour with a view to writing an article & alerting the A-team
There appear to be at least three causes: running Grammarly, saving to OneDrive, enabling the TextCursor indicator in Ease of Access settings.

All very different causes but disabling each worked for the users affected. Clearly this could be a difficult nut for the Access team to crack