Very old database

Hi all,

I have a database that was created back on November 29, 1993. It has
an MDB extension, but try as I might I cannot figure out how to open
it up. Access 2003 says "Unrecognized database format". I tried
going through the File -Get External Data -Import and loading it
that way, and also through an ODBC connection. No luck.

I don't know if it was originally created in Access or dBase, but I
assume it was in Access because of the file extension. My father
hired somebody to create this database and an associated application
back then and we no longer have contact with the original developer so
we don't have access to the source code or anything.

Do you know of any applications that I can use to pull the data out of
this file? Or how about the data structure and I can just write a
quick program to parse all the data out? Any help would be
appreciated!

Thanks!

Ryan

Best I can tell, with that creation date it could Access 1.0 or 2.0. 2.0 has
a copyright date of 1993. I couldn't find anything on converting Version 1.0
but here's an article on converting Version 2.0 to ACC97/2000. Perhaps you
could get someone running one of these versions to try a conversion.

The Grandfather of Access (aka Allen Browne) appears here on a regular basis;
perhaps he'll have some helpful advice!

http://databases.about.com/c/ht/00/1...0976729732.htm

Good luck!

Linq

--
There's ALWAYS more than one way to skin a cat!

Answers/posts based on Access 2000

Message posted via http://www.accessmonster.com

I tried what that article said, however Access just pops up with an
"Unrecognized database format". I think it's going to end being some
3rd party solution to get this thing working, but I can't find
anything out there. Based off of what you said, it is sounding, to
me, like it was created with Access 1.0.

I can open the file in a hex editor and see a lot of the text in
there, so it's not encrypted...I wonder how hard it would be to figure
out the data structure that was used to store this data. Near the top
of the file I think I saw the column names.

Thanks for the help so far! Still out of luck though. Any other
ideas?

Ryan

On Aug 24, 4:37 pm, "missinglinq via AccessMonster.com" <u28780@uwe>
wrote:

Access 1.0 databases can be opened in Access 1.0 and Access 2.0 only. You
need to find someone with Access 2.0 still installed to open and save in
Access 2.0 format, or get a copy of your own and install it (caution: I
think it will not run on a machine with more than 1GB of memory)... that can
be opened by a few later versions (though not the most current two or three)
and saved in later format. Almost seems like playing leapfrog, eh?

The big "barrier" to conversion from Access 2.0 to later will be if it uses
API calls... they'll have to be changed from the 16-bit API call to the
corresponding 32-bit API call. Seems unlikely to me that an Access 1.0 DB
is going to have any API calls, though.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP


<ryan.barnard@gmail.comwrote in message
news:1187999653.093523.182290@q5g2000prf.googlegro ups.com...

<ryan.barnard@gmail.comschreef in bericht news:1187983868.130310.194100@x35g2000prf.googlegr oups.com...I still have Access 2.0 installed and running here.
If you send me a zipped copy of the db I will have a look.

Arno R