How to display date of last edit of the database on a report

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nona
  • Start date Start date
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Nona

Is there a way to display the date of the last edit of the database on a
report?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
What do you mean by "last edit of the database"? Do you mean the last time a
value in a field in any table was changed? Do you mean the last time any
structural change was made to forms, reports, vba modules,or data structure?

In either case there is nothing stored that will tell you, unless you store
the information in some manner. It can be done, but the utility of doing so
(in most cases) is far less valuable than the effort to do so.

John Spencer
Access MVP 2002-2005, 2007-2009
The Hilltop Institute
University of Maryland Baltimore County
 
he request to me was to add the date of the last time an edit was made to any
field in the database. It's for financial reports. I thought it was a strange
request, but I thought it might be possible since the last modification date
is displayed on the database properties before it is opened. I realize that
would also include the structural changes, but that would probably be ok.
 
Access does not store automatically the last time an edit to the data was made.

Your first task is to determine exactly what the request is.

In order from least complex to most complex

You could have a table with one field that gets constantly updated and would
show the last time any field in the entire database was updated.

Or you could have a field in each record that would show the last time each
record was updated.

Or you could track each change to the data in an audit table and have the last
time each field was updated or populated. Check the following out to get an
idea of how you might do this:

Audit Trail - Log changes at the record level at:
http://allenbrowne.com/AppAudit.html

You would have to do all data entry through a form in order to do this.
Unless you are using MS SQL Server or one of the other data base servers that
has triggers (or the equivalent) as the data store.

John Spencer
Access MVP 2002-2005, 2007-2009
The Hilltop Institute
University of Maryland Baltimore County
 
Thanks for your help. I agree with you --the utility of creating this is not
worth the time and effort.

Thanks for answering and clarifying this.
 
You could easily get the modification date for the db file. This would be
the same date/time that's displayed in Windows Explorer. As long as your db
is split and you get the file date for the backend, you can be sure it has
not been written to since that date.
 
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