Orchid,
Are you saying that the users all have theie own versions of the
database at their own locations? If not, and you actually have all the
users going into the same database on a network location then there is
a recommended way of handling this.
You create the database as you have done but once complete (as it will
be at the moment) you take a copy of it and empty all data from it.
This copy has all its tables removed and you then LINK to the tables in
the full database.
Then you go back to the main database and remove all the forms and
other rubbish, leaving only the data (alternatively you can leave it
all here but it means maintaining the forms etc. in two places.)
You then do one of two things. You either instruct your users to copy
the front end (with the linked tables) to their own PCs and double
click on that file and NOT the one on the network, OR you create a
function to do this for them.
I would create a new function in the server end database (with the
actual data) that is run on startup, that copies the current server
version of the front end (with the linked tables) to their local C
drive and then closes the main database (unless it is you of course...
you can learn about that later)
You could then think about version control, you now have a database
that is being properly accessed by your users using a recommended and
safe method. You want users to be using the latest version of the front
end, so you could automate a version detection that would give you a
new copy of the front end if you are out of date. This has been done
before and i'm pretty sure that there is some info on
www.mvps.com...probably...
That is all for now as many others should follow on with their
recommendations...
P.S. if you let more than about 10 people go into a server based
database you will probably kill it very quickly and need a lot of time
and energy to keep recovering it...
P.P.S. If your database is stuck now and there are definitley no users
in it... you need to get the server admin to delete the .ldb file and
then you can try to repair/compact things.
P.P.P.S. you will at some point need to kick users out to maintain the
database... ALL databases have downtime at some point... even if they
are monster server systems with mirroring etc...
Good luck!!!
