How to Fix Version Compatibility Problem in MS Access Database?

Last week, I had got an email from one of my friend with MS access database attachment. I had successfully downloaded Access database on my system. When I tried to open the database then got an error message “you can’t see this database, update your MS access database”. I want to tell you that am not an Access database geek so I searched on the Internet and found solution to fix the problem.

Here, I will share all the steps which I had tried to fix the problem.

1. Check the Version of my Access Database
2. Check the version of received Access database
3. Convert an Access 2000 database to .accdb file format

1. Check the version of my Access database that is MS Access 2000. You can check your Access database version by checking the registry for below key.

"HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Access.Application\CurVer", this will give you the following values:
Access.Application.8: that means: "Access 97", Access.Application.9: that means: "Access 2000", Access.Application.10 that means: "Access XP", Access.Application.11 that means: "Access 2003", Access.Application.12 that means: "Access 2007" & Access.Application.13 that means: "Access 2010"

2. Check the version of received Access database that is MS Access 2010. You can do this with the help of File-Format property. To do run this:

Set obj access = CreateObject( "Access.Application" )
Obj access. Open current database “c:\scripts\test.mdb”
Int format = obj access.current project.file format
Select Case int Format
Case 8 Print "Microsoft Access 97", Case 9 Print "Microsoft Access 2000", Case 10 Print "Microsoft Access XP", Case 11 Print "Microsoft Access 2003", Case 12 Print "Microsoft Access 2003", Case 13 Print "Microsoft Access 2003"
End Select

Note: As we know that MS Access database is not backward compatible.

3. Convert an Access 2000 database to .accdb file format, I have followed below steps to fix Access database:

• Open Access database using Access 2010 and save then as .accdb file format.
• Go to the file menu, click on the open tab select Access 2000 database that I want to see.
• Go back to the file tab, select save & publish button and then select .accdb file format to save.
• Now select “save as” tab and enter the file name to save the received Access database.
• Now open the copied Access database.
• Successfully done.