Ryan said:
I had a question concerning the Microsoft Access 2000
program. When two or more people access a database or
table in Access, it locks up causing their computers to
freeze. I did a performance analysis test on the tables,
and it told me to change the data types of some of the
items in the tables. One of the things they want me to
change is the data type from Text to Long Integer. I can't
find the option to change the data type from Text to Long
Integer. The one that's closest to that option is
AutoNumber. Would changing all of the data types in all of
these tables be a solution to the lock up problem? Or
could it be that the server's need to be fixed?
I don't think this recommendation about changing the data types has
anything to do with your lock-up problem, though it may improve
performance depending on why it was made. To change a field's data type
from Text to Long Integer, first change its Data Type (on the design
grid) to Number, and then change its Field Size property to Long
Integer. You can only do that successfully, of course, if the field
only contains numeric data, and you can only do it without losing
information if the data in the field can all be represented as a Long
Integer. But as I said, I doubt this will have any effect on your
lock-up problem.
I don't know yet why your users are having lockups. First make sure
that all the current updates and service packs for Access 2000 and
Microsoft Jet 4.0 have been applied. Make sure that all users have full
permissions (read, update, create, and delete) on the folder containing
the database, and make sure that the users' Access options aren't set to
open all databases exclusively.
Ideally, if a database is going to be used by multiple users at once,
the database should be split into two files, a front-end containing all
the forms, reports, queries, macros, and modules, and a back-end
containing just the tables. Each user has his own independent copy of
the front-end, with only linked tables pointing to the shared tables inn
the back-end. This arrangement vastly reduces the chances of corruption
in both the back-end and front-end databases, and shares the data more
efficiently. However, sharing a single, monolithic database as you are
doing does not in itself cause the kind of lock-up you describe.
If people have been forced to exit the database by cancelling Access
from the task manager or by <shudder> rebooting their computers, the
database file may already be corrupt. You can try running the Compact
and Repair utility and see if that works and makes things better, and if
not you might try creating a new, empty database and importing all
objects from the original database.
