Access 2003

[Neil Ginsberg]

I have a client who is using Access 2002/2000 (the database itself is
written in 2000), and is considering migrating to Access 2003. Any
recommendations on whether Access 2003 is worth the migrate, or should he
stick with 2002?

Thanks!

Neil

[Wayne Morgan]

If you are going to upgrade, I would go to 2003, not 2002. The help files
are definately better in 2003 than 2000 or 2002. There are some other nice
features added. The 2000 field format is still the default and the 2002 file
format is now the 2002/2003 format. Here is more information on new
features.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...roduct=acc2003

--
Wayne Morgan
MS Access MVP
"Neil Ginsberg" <ne**@nrgconsul t.com> wrote in message
news:NX******** *********@newsr ead2.news.pas.e arthlink.net...

I have a client who is using Access 2002/2000 (the database itself is
written in 2000), and is considering migrating to Access 2003. Any
recommendations on whether Access 2003 is worth the migrate, or should he
stick with 2002?

[Larry Linson]

"Wayne Morgan" wrote

If you are going to upgrade, I would go to
2003, not 2002. The help files are definately
better in 2003 than 2000 or 2002.
I respectfully disagree -- the _content_ of the Help files has been somewhat
(but IMNSHO only somewhat) improved, but the user interface to help is an
abomination. The better content is useless if you cannot easily get to it.
There are some other nice
features added.

My observation is that there were few, very, very few, Access-specific
changes between Access 2002-2003, and that the bulk of the changes were
Office-wide improvements to collaboration features aimed at the corporate
enterprise environment.

If you are not in the corporate enterprise environment (in which case, your
dedicated Microsoft marketing team will be making the case with your IT or
corporate management to upgrade), then I see very little reason to upgrade
from Office 2002 to Office 2003 System. Either would be an improvement over
Access 2000, even if you have all three of Access 2000's Service Packs
installed. (Sadly, I am doing some work for one client on a system using
Access 2000 that only has SP-1 installed; fortunately, it has only possibly
one time "bit me in the tender places", corrupting and losing access to a
Form.)

And, if I understood the original post, the upgrade would be from Access
2002 (Office XP) to Access 2003 (Office 2003 System), so my advice would be,
"Don't waste your time and energy." If all the users have Access 2002, I
don't see any advantage in saving your DB in Access 2000 format.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

[Neil Ginsberg]

> And, if I understood the original post, the upgrade would be from Access

2002 (Office XP) to Access 2003 (Office 2003 System), so my advice would be, "Don't waste your time and energy." If all the users have Access 2002, I
don't see any advantage in saving your DB in Access 2000 format.

Hi, Larry.

Actually, about half the users have A2000, and the other half have A2002.
Perhaps more significantly, the db itself is written in A2000, and I'm using
A2000 (as the sole developer). So going to A2003 would be significant in
that it would unify the version (though some may stay at 2002, I suppose)
and would upgrade the development version, itself.

On another note, another client of mine is looking to convert an MDB front
end with ODBC links to SQL Server 7.0 to an ADP file. Any thoughts on that,
both in general, and in regard to A2003?

Thanks,

Neil
By the way, have you tried the new Buffet Grapevine up on W.D. Tate? It
looks like a dive, but it's a pretty decent Chinese buffet.

[Steve Jorgensen]

On Sat, 29 May 2004 20:29:43 GMT, "Neil Ginsberg" <ne**@nrgconsul t.com> wrote:

And, if I understood the original post, the upgrade would be from Access
2002 (Office XP) to Access 2003 (Office 2003 System), so my advice would

be,

"Don't waste your time and energy." If all the users have Access 2002, I
don't see any advantage in saving your DB in Access 2000 format.

Hi, Larry.

Actually, about half the users have A2000, and the other half have A2002.
Perhaps more significantly, the db itself is written in A2000, and I'm using
A2000 (as the sole developer). So going to A2003 would be significant in
that it would unify the version (though some may stay at 2002, I suppose)
and would upgrade the development version, itself.

On another note, another client of mine is looking to convert an MDB front
end with ODBC links to SQL Server 7.0 to an ADP file. Any thoughts on that,
both in general, and in regard to A2003?

You'll get some other opinions that disagree with mine here, but I've been
working on an ADP project for the last year, and I'm thinking it might be
worth the effort to convert the whole thing to an MDB. I -might- consider
starting a new project as an ADP if all the stars were aligned just right, but
I would never in my wildest dreams think I should convert an existing, working
MDB application to an ADP.

Using an MDB as a front-end to SQL Server does require some work-arounds that
are not required in an ADP, but these work-arounds are well known, and well
described in a lot of places. On the other hand, I spend a large part of each
day working on an ADP application working around bugs in the ADP
implementation itself. There is also net performance gain with ADPs since
they make many more requests from the server to handle the excessively tight
integration with the server back-end.

[Steve Jorgensen]

Correction...

implementati on itself. There is also net performance gain with ADPs since
they make many more requests from the server to handle the excessively tight
integration with the server back-end.

Should read - "There is also -no- net performance gain ..."

[Salad]

Neil Ginsberg wrote:

And, if I understood the original post, the upgrade would be from Access
2002 (Office XP) to Access 2003 (Office 2003 System), so my advice would
be,

"Don't waste your time and energy." If all the users have Access 2002, I
don't see any advantage in saving your DB in Access 2000 format.

Hi, Larry.

Actually, about half the users have A2000, and the other half have A2002.
Perhaps more significantly, the db itself is written in A2000, and I'm using
A2000 (as the sole developer). So going to A2003 would be significant in
that it would unify the version (though some may stay at 2002, I suppose)
and would upgrade the development version, itself.

A2003 requires Win2000 or WinXP OS, does not run on NT or 98. Make sure
all of your users have that OS running before you do a mass migration to it.

On another note, another client of mine is looking to convert an MDB front
end with ODBC links to SQL Server 7.0 to an ADP file. Any thoughts on that,
both in general, and in regard to A2003?

Thanks,

Neil
By the way, have you tried the new Buffet Grapevine up on W.D. Tate? It
looks like a dive, but it's a pretty decent Chinese buffet.

[Salad]

Larry Linson wrote:

"Wayne Morgan" wrote

> If you are going to upgrade, I would go to
> 2003, not 2002. The help files are definately
> better in 2003 than 2000 or 2002.

I respectfully disagree -- the _content_ of the Help files has been somewhat
(but IMNSHO only somewhat) improved, but the user interface to help is an
abomination. The better content is useless if you cannot easily get to it.

I wonder if anyone has told MS that their help files are the worst in
the industry or if they sit around and slap each other on that back and
share high-5s for their abomination.

[David W. Fenton]

"Larry Linson" <bo*****@localh ost.not> wrote in
news:3f******** *********@nwrdd c01.gnilink.net :

Sadly, I am doing some work for one client on a system using
Access 2000 that only has SP-1 installed; fortunately, it has only
possibly one time "bit me in the tender places", corrupting and
losing access to a Form.

I don't have any such issues with A2K running on SR1a.

Because of the Dranconian security patches to Outlook that were
rolled out in SR2 and beyond, I won't apply anything but SR1a.

And no corruption.

So far as my experience with A2K runs, SR1a+ and SP6+ is all that's
required to get a usable version of A2K.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc

[Tom van Stiphout]

On Sat, 29 May 2004 21:44:46 GMT, "David W. Fenton"
<dX********@bwa y.net.invalid> wrote:

By the way, if you are in an Exchange environment, you can add this to
the registry:
[HKEY_CURRENT_US ER\Software\Pol icies\Microsoft \Security]
"CheckAdminSett ings"=dword:000 00001

and then use the special security form (soory, the exact name escapes
me now) in the public folder tree to adjust the security checks to
more normal settings.

A client must have a REALLY good reason not to go with the latest
versions from Windows Update. With all variety of machines out there,
the client being able to proscribe (often ill-informed) outdated
platforms is a variable I don't really want to deal with.

-Tom.

"Larry Linson" <bo*****@localh ost.not> wrote in
news:3f******* **********@nwrd dc01.gnilink.ne t:

Sadly, I am doing some work for one client on a system using
Access 2000 that only has SP-1 installed; fortunately, it has only
possibly one time "bit me in the tender places", corrupting and
losing access to a Form.

I don't have any such issues with A2K running on SR1a.

Because of the Dranconian security patches to Outlook that were
rolled out in SR2 and beyond, I won't apply anything but SR1a.

And no corruption.

So far as my experience with A2K runs, SR1a+ and SP6+ is all that's
required to get a usable version of A2K.