Dear all,
I was very concerned to hear of this problem and asked exeGesIS to
provide
an explanation and advice to post to this list.
Kate
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Desc problem.
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:12:24 -0000
From: Amanda Bodilly <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Kate Fernie (E-mail)" <[log in to unmask]>
Kate can you please post this on the forum for me, I don't have web
access
on my machine
Thanks.
Amanda
We have spent several hours trying to recreate this overwriting
descriptions
problem in the new version 2 system, and unfortunately have managed to
recreate it, but only with some difficulty. It seems to occur when you
are
editing the descriptions and then scrolling through to the next or a
previous record without closing down the description box, although it
does
not happen every time. It seems to be a synchronisation problem as both
forms are accessing the same table. Changes have been made in the new
version, so that if you scroll through records whilst the description
box is
open, your descriptions won't overwrite each other.
Users really shouldn't scroll through records with the description box
open,
please avoid using the database this way.
It is unfortunate that with so many of you using the database for such a
long period of time this problem has only been bought to our attention
recently.
exeGesIS staff can only apologise that this problem has occurred and
hope it
is not too wide spread.
To check that you do not have any overwritten data, you can do a
duplicates
search, as it seems to overwrite one piece of data with another.
1.To check for duplicate data, go to adhoc queries, create a make table
query from your Mon table, and make a new table zmondesc include the
fields
'Mon' & 'Desc'.
2.Go into the design view of your new table and change the desc field
type
from a memo field to a text field of 200 characters. When you save it
you
will it will tell you that you will lose some data but that is okay as
this
is only a temporary table. This is necessary as you cannot do a
duplicate
search on a memo field but a duplicate record should show up within the
first 200 characters of a text field.
3. If you have your wizards loaded use the duplicate query wizard to run
a
query on the zmondesc table looking for duplicates in the 'desc' field
and
adding Mon in as additional data. If you do not have your wizards
loaded
create a select query based on your zMonDesc table. Pull both the 'Mon'
and
'Desc' fields into the query builder section. Sort the 'desc' field in
ascending order, in the criteria box under the 'Desc' field type the
following:
In (SELECT [Desc] FROM [zmondesc] As Tmp GROUP BY [Desc] HAVING
Count(*)>1
)
and run the query.
If the result is blank you have no duplicate data, and can therefore
feel
reassured that no data has been overwritten.
4.If you do have duplicate data, you may wish to go back to the query
design
mode and change it to a make table query eg zMonDescDups you can then
print
this list out close down all the queries and go back into the database
using
macro autoexec.
5. check using your list that these really are duplicates, opening the
full
description memo field for each of the pairs of duplicates. Mark off on
your
list which is the correct description and which record has been
overwritten.
6. If the overwritten description is a new record then you will have to
recreate the description again. If it is a record for which you have an
original migration record on CD you can at least import or attach the
original Mon table it will import as Mon1, you may wish to rename it
zzzmon1
to save you get it mixed up with your Mon table. You can then open both
table and copy and paste your original descriptions into your current
Mon
table. If you have made changes these will be lost, but at least you
will
have a better starting point.
For Access2 run time users we suggest you import or attach the Mon table
into an access97 database if possible and create the zMonDesc table and
duplicates query from there.
Again we can only apologise that this problem has occurred and taken so
long
to come to light.
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