Compact and Repair

[fluffyozzy]

Hi guys,

This is just for discussion really. What does Compact and Repair actually do? If I was to set my database to compact and repair on close, am I in danger of losing any data, formatting on forms or anything? What are the pros and cons?

I would really appreciate some replies. Thank you in advance

 

[Jacob Mathai]

I never had any problem with compact and repair on close. I have been using it for years now.

 

[*Pete*]

I have never had any problems using compact and Repair on closing the database.

It is good for keeping the database's size small.

The only downside I have come across is that it takes Access a little longer to shut down as it is running the compact and repair in the background and people tend to get impatient.

Regards

Pete

 

[dsigner]

Very useful discussion so far. Anyone care to answer the other part - about what does repair and compact actually do. I've wondered for a while.

 

[workmad3]

I don't think there are any real downsides to compact and repair. There are several downsides to not compacting and repairing, such as huge sizes for databases etc. If you are doing heavy modifications to data, forms or data structure you really need to compact on close (I had some files shoot up to over 75mb in access 97.... after a compact they were down to about 10mb). If the db is just in normal use, then you can just tell users how to compact and repair and ask them to do it once a week, or once a month or something.

 

[ghudson]

The Access help files [built-in and on-line] also have some great stuff that will answer many of your questions. Here is the on-line link to what the built-in Access help files also provides...

About compacting and repairing an Access file

Compact and repair an Access file

One of my personal favorites...
Automatic compact and repair with DB closed?

 

[fluffyozzy]

Thanks for the discussion guys and the links. I have read some of what Microsoft says on the topic but I can't bring myself to trust them completely, they don't often point out the pitfalls etc... This forum is usually my first port of call if I want to look up something, it is always a learning experience.

So, from the discussion so far, there are no negative aspects to compacting. I think the word "repair" was sort of worrying me. If it's not broken, why repair, right? Anyway, I think I will use ghudson's code on compacting when db reaches a particular size, seems like an excellent way of doing things