Corrupt Form - Rescue or Remake?

Question

During my work on this database application, I've apparently managed to corrupt a form in the application - attempting to save any edit to any field on the form will cause Access to crash, and for the database file to report corrupted when Access attempts to re-open it.

I've tried exporting the entire form + controls as text, then re-importing them using VB code (from Allen Browne's website) but it will not re-import without either crashing Access or telling me the form isn't import-able due to an error (no error number or description given).

The form is rather complex, hence I am hesitant to just remake it from scratch, so is there a way to save it? If I do manage to recover it, does this mean I should transfer everything to a new MDB file (in case it's a cascading failure effect)?

To be honest, I've never managed to corrupt an Access database object before, so I don't know if this is something that signals the end of that MDB file, or just something I can correct and continue as before.

Answer 1

Decompile is a good thing to try once you've made a copy of the database. Have you tried saving the form under a different name using File >> Save As? Also try copying and pasting the form with a different name from the database window.

Also it's been my experience that one corrupt form/report does not spread to the rest of the database. That said it doesn't hurt to clean things up. Compact and repair only fixes up tables and related data such as indexes and relationships. To clean up corrupted other objects such as forms and reports you must import them into a new MDB/ACCDB. Tip: Close the database container window if you have a lot of objects. Access wastes a lot of time during the import refreshing the database container window.

Answer 2

What I ended up having to do was re-create the form, and copy element by element until I discovered that the strSupplierID combo box itself was the cause of the crashing. I re-created it from scratch, manually giving it the same properties, and replacing the VB from stored copies I cut and pasted to the clipboard. The form now works, and I removed the corrupted form, and compacted the database. Thanks for the help, everyone! :)