MDB in A2007? (2003/2007)

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I have an application in A97 that needs to be upgraded to either A2003 or A2007. It relies on User Level Security, therefore, I understand that the ACCDB format is not usable and it needs to be kept in MDB format. I understand that A2007 will use the MDB format in addition to the ACCDB format.

Questions
– does A2007 support the *creation* of MDB files, or is it limited to using *existing* MDB files?
– if the latter, how would the A97 file be migrated into the new MDB format — by using A2003?

More subjectively — if the application is self-contained (ie, program flow is controlled entirely by its own form-based menu system, and does not use the native Access menus), what are the advantages to using A2007 instead of A2003? In other words, if the target computers already have A2003 installed , would anything be gained within the context of a single, existing application by upgrading to A2007? The new Ribbon interface would not be used without significant changes to the program.

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You are correct that you should not use the .accdb file format if you need user-level security. I’d use the Access 2000 format, it’s the most stable and most widely used/usable format: Access 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 can work with a database in Access 2000 format without conversion.

You can specify the default database format that Access 2007 uses for new databases in the Popular tab of Access Options. You can choose between Access 2000 (.mdb), Access 2002/2003 (.mdb) and Access 2007 (.accdb) format.
You can also open an existing database and convert it to Access 97 (.mdb), Access 2000 (.mdb), Access 2002/2003 (.mdb) or Access 2007 (.accdb) format.

If you don’t want to use the specific new features of Access 2007, I see no compelling reason to install it if the target PCs already have Access 2003 installed.

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