Database won’t open (2002) (2002)

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I was working on a database for an organization I work with this morning and am now getting the following message: ” ‘AOIndex’ is not an index in this table.” On clicking the OK button, Access opens, but the database will not. Of course, they don’t have a backup that is remotely recent so they will be somewhat toasted if we can’t this open.

Here are the details. I was creating a quick and dirty report using autoreport and the computer was running out of memory. So I shut down both Outlook and Word which were also running and eventually Access. I subsequently logged off and restarted and this is when the error message occurred. To the best of my recollection I didn’t do anything at all with indexes. The only thing I was working with was trying to figure out some syntax for a filter for the report.

Are there any options for getting this open and fixing the problem. This is Office XP running on Windows XP on a windows network.

PeterN

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Have you tried holding down the shift key while opening it?…
It sounds to me like there may be something that runs on Startup and if there is an error it’s not opening the db window…

Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s a thought… ??

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I tried it, but this didn’t work.

Any other ideas, anyone?

Peter

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1. Use JetComp utility.

You can download a stand-alone utility that tries to compact and repair a database from Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 295334. JetComp doesn’t open the database, so it is able to repair some databases that can’t be opened any more.

2. Import database objects into a new database.

Create a new, blank database. Use File | Get External Data | Import… to try to import as many objects (tables, queries, forms, …) from the problem database as possible. If you have custom toolbars, click Options>> in the Import dialog and check the Menus and Toolbars box. If you succeed, you will have to set startup options and non-standard references manually in the new database.

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Hi Hans:

I was wondering whether there was a utility. I will download it and try it. Unfortunately it is a long weekend (or fortunately!) so I won’t be able to try this till Tuesday now. These things always happen on a Friday.

As to your second suggestion, that was the first thing I tried before I posted here and the same error message occurs when I try the import which fails on opening the database object so you can’t import anything at all. The exact same error message occurs.

If the utility doesn’t work, is it possible to open the database and edit the indexes through VBA? Thanks for the suggestions.

Peter

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If importing doesn’t work, things don’t look good. The VBA route won’t work – it uses the same mechanisms that Access uses. One other thing to try (but I’m not optimistic) is to try to import data into Excel (Data | Get External Data | New Database Query…) If this works, it will only salvage the tables.

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Just an update on this problem: I tried to run JetComp, but it was not successful. Fortunately the gods were kind and I was able to import the data into excel and then re-import it into an old copy of the database that was working. The only stuff that was lost was a few changes to some forms that only existed on the corrupted database.

The good news is, I have convinced the people in this organization to back up their data more than once every five or six months!

Many thanks for your help.

Peter

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I’m glad you could recover the data. More frequent backups are certainly a good idea; I hope it will be much more frequent than formerly.

I recommend splitting the database into a backend with only tables and a frontend with all other database objects (and links to the tables). The Database Splitter Wizard (in Tools | Database Utilities) can do this for you. The chance that the backend corrupts is much smaller, so you won’t have to go to all this trouble to retrieve the data.

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