97 to 2003 database Conversion

[hobbes]

My company is about to undertake a huge upgrading project, where they will install Win XP and Office 2003 on every computer. Currently, some employees use Access 2000 and others use Access 97. Consequently, we have some employees that still run Access 97 databases.

Can anyone give me advice on the best route to take when upgrading these 97 databases to 2003? Would it be better to convert it to 2000 first and then convert it to 2003, or just do a straight conversion from 97 to 2003?

Thank you very much for your help!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The "quantum jump" occurred between Ac97 and Ac2K, in which the DAO concept was supplemented more strongly by ADO, a separate library needed for ASP support (among other new features). Other major library routine restructing occurred, too.

It it were up to me and I had the required installation kits and licenses, I would go through Ac2K ONCE on ONE WORKSTATION to convert the DB itself behind the scenes. Once I got that working, I would convert that DB to AcXP, again behind the scenes, looking for more "gotcha" cases. Once that was done, I would move everyone in one action (again, assuming the kits and licenses are there to support it.)

This might entail some "export to text" operations from the production version of your DB on the day when everyone moves. You would export every table and then import every table to the final DB to populate it. You might also have some issues to contend with regarding autonumber fields. I have seen posts on that subject following a conversion.