Front End/Back End Conversions (97/2000 on NT4.0)

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My big question of the day! Is it possible to have a 2000 (Converted from 97) database have linked tables back to a 97 database? I have tried this and can’t tell if I am doing anything wrong. I have an existing database that does not consist of a FE/BE situation in Office 97. However, our IT department is in process of upgrading to Office 2000. Currently they are half done and are not projected to complete for several weeks. I thought I could split the database to FE/BE scenario by making two front ends both linking to one BE in Office 97. One Front end is of course in 97 and the other would be in 2000. This way I thought that the 2000 users could use their FE and the 97 users could use theirs. I proceded to make the BE consisting of all the tables in the original 97 database. I then took everything else and converted to 2000 for the front end. I left the rest of the split DB in 97 for that FE. I then went to each FE and linked the tables. When it came time to test the 2000 FE, it worked fine up until I closed the FE. When I reopen it, the table links all appear but when the FE tries to execute something as simmple as opening a form based on the linked table it errors out saying the it can’t find the table and the network connection may have been lost. Does anyone have any suggestions, especially since I have two more of these to convert and be able to use before all of the upgrades are complete.

Thank You

Kevin

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What you are trying to do should work, though it doesn’t always work well. We’ve done it on several databases when clients converted from 97 to 2000, but performance is usually sort of lame, and in one case we had corruption of the 97 BE that caused us to loose some data. If you aren’t using memo fields, corruption should be less of a problem. Can you open the tables from the database container window? If so something really strange is going on.

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I can open them initially right after I link. But if I closed the FE and reopen, I can see them but cannot open them. I still get the error that I might have lost the network connection.

Thanks

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If you’ve ever linked tables to the front end, you’ll see their tracks when you open the front end. That doesn’t mean that the links are valid. If you try to open a form and get an error, on the other hand, it means that the links are *not* valid. You didn’t give the exact error message, but it sounds suspiciously like the issue that occurs when Access 2000 is run on a machine where any of the 2002 apps have been installed. Take a look at ACC2000: Error Message: Error Accessing File. Network Connection May Have Been Lost. and see if that describes your situation.

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Thanks Charlotte,
When I read this article it seemed as though it was written for me. I did exactly that, copied forms and reports with modules from a 97 DB into a 2000 DB while in 2000. Then closed and reopened, that is when I got that error message, (the same one in the article). The only thing I have not checked is the version of VBE6.dll file. I will do that next. Thanks again

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