"#Name?" glitch in access, missing records & unsaved changes

[cs1016]

Hello,

I maintain a database that tracks student information. It's used by several people, and is split into a front- and back-end. Yesterday two users both encountered a glitch where every field for every record displayed "#Name?". They both closed the database, and when it was reopened it seemed fine. This morning we discovered that several of the records they were working with have completely disappeared, and some of the changes that were made disappeared.

-The deleted records are all from a query that one user sorted and then exported to excel. About 20 records went missing.
-The records whose changes weren't saved were from a different form.

These are trusted users; no one deleted the records. My best guess is that something happened in Access simultaneously for both users -the #Name? error that resulted in selected records being deleted and others not updated. Has this happened to anyone else? What is the root cause of this problem?

I have a trusted backup, but before restoring it I'd like to know how exactly this happened so that I can make the proper changes to the back-up before moving forward.

I'd really appreciate any help or feedback from folks! Thanks in advance.

 

[sneuberg]

I'd tried a compact and repair on the backend and see if you get the records back or at least find out if it got corrupted.

How's your front-end connected to the back-end? I've heard WIFI can cause problems.

 

[AccessBlaster]

-The deleted records are all from a query that one user sorted and then exported to excel. About 20 records went missing.
-The records whose changes weren't saved were from a different form.

Is it possible the missing records are in the "exported excel" sheet? If so, append them back. I would also look at the SQL on that query.

 

[cs1016]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies! both the front and back ends are located on a shared network. Is it conceivable that the network got interrupted at the moment both users were working on it?

Unfortunately, the user who downloaded the excel data then modified the spreadsheet past the point of use, so I can't append it, but that was a great idea!

Going to try to compact + repair, but would still appreciate any further advice or suggestions that people might have!

 

[AccessBlaster]

Going to try to compact + repair, but would still appreciate any further advice or suggestions that people might have!

Do a backup first.

 

[cs1016]

thanks everyone! wasn't able to retrieve the records, but I restored from a backup. lost some things, but I'll be backing up more often & implementing some other changes to hopefully prevent this happening again. pretty sure it had something to do with the network/internet connection, but I have no control over that, unfortunately.

appreciate all the feedback!