View Deleted Records (2002, SP 3)

Topic

New Reply

Is there a utility or add in for Access that lets you view deleted records so that you can bring them back by removing the deleted mark similar to how this works in dBase. We have a dBase file that Access had linked to. One of our users inadvertantly deleted all the records. Since it was a dBase file, we went into the file with dBase and used the dot commands to set deleted off and then recall all. This brought back all the records but if this had happened to an Access file would there be no way possible to get the records back?

Reply | Quote

Replies

Once you delete them in Access they are gone.
You could create a boolean field titled “Deleted” and have a delete record button that merely changes the value from no to yes. You could then base all your queries, forms, etc. off the records where deleted =0.

Reply | Quote

This is the assumption that I always had and what I have always done until this happened. The helpdesk for the dBase software to which we were linked said that there was something that could be added to Access to give us this capability within Access. I was just checking in case I was unaware of something that could perform this function.

Reply | Quote

I am unaware of anything that could be added but if there is such a beast, I’m sure someone will point it out to us.

Reply | Quote

I agree with Dashiell. There is no built-in setting for this. There may be third-party add-ins that provide this capability, but I don’t know of any.

Reply | Quote

The only practical way to do this in Access is to include a yes/no field in each record and use code to set that field and filter the recordsets instead of actually deleting the record. The entire application would have to be designed to operate like this, though. In dBase, the system takes care of that and the records aren’t really gone until you pack the database, the rough equivalent of a compact in Access. That is NOT the case in Access, though, where the database is updated in real time, not when you compact.

Reply | Quote

Of course the obvious follow-on is “How do you prevent people from deleting records unexpectedly?” and that’s where Access User Security comes into play. With appropriate permissions, users are prevented from deleting records, though you may have an administrative userID that has permissions to delete in order to do garbage clean-up. This issue is also an example of why you want to 1) Split a database into a front-end and a back-end, and 2) Never let users work at the table level. Just my on a day where I wish it was Friday.

Reply | Quote