Debugger stops working in Access VBA Editor

[XLEAccessGuru]

Something's been occurring recently that has me stumped and I want to know if anyone else have ever experienced this when programming Access.

I'll be using the debugger to step through code and it will do just fine for hours. Then all of a sudden, without having changed anything in my code, error handlers stop working, breakpoints don't break and "on error" statements no longer break or resume as they are supposed to. Essentially, all debugging and error handling stops working entirely in my program.

I've done the following to troubleshoot this and none have resolved it for me:

1. Compact/Repair
2. Place several breakpoints throughout my app at the very beginning of procedures where I know they are not bypassing a condition that could be causing the breakpoint to be skipped.
3. Checked all general DB and VBA Editor properties and options to make sure something didn't flip.

A few more points to note... There have been times when I've exported the form I was working on to another DB, closed the DB I'm having the problem with and reimported the form I exported back into my project. This has fixed the problem a few times in the past but is no longer doing the trick.

It's driving me insane because I can't debug my program and its occurrence is becoming more and more frequent of late. It seems the more complex the programming gets, the more this seems to happen.

Has this ever happened to anyone else and have you ever figured out why?

Any ideas are welcome! Thanks friends!

 

[RuralGuy]

What version of Access and what OS?

 

[XLEAccessGuru]

2000 & Xp.

 

[rolaaus]

It sounds like you are saying this is happening with one particular MDB, but I don't want to assume so, can you confirm if this is happening on all or some or just one?

Also, how big is the actual MDB file that this is happening to? How many objects are there?

 

[RuralGuy]

2000 & Xp.

Does the same thing happen when you open the db while holding down a <SHIFT> key? Is everything checked in the Startup menu? (Use Access Special Keys)??

 

[simcha80]

Same problem

I'm having exactly the same problem.

The code just churns straight through breakpoints or "Stop" lines as if they weren't there.

This problem is frustrating the hell out of me, because there are lots of DoCmd.RunSQL commands in the procedure, and I'm getting a type mismatch error, so because I can't break execution of the code, I can't figure out which SQL statement is causing the type mismatch.

I am also running 2000 on XP - it's a company system and I can't change that. (I just got 2007 at home, which so far I think is really good, by the way, and I run 2002 on my laptop.)

 

[boblarson]

Go into TOOLS > STARTUP and make sure the USE ACCESS SPECIAL KEYS checkbox is checked.

 

[simcha80]

Bob,
Worked a treat. Thanks.

 

[boblarson]

 

[gemma-the-husky]

what may be happening is that after an error, you are not executing a "resume" statement. Unless you resume after an error, you dont reset the error handler, and you wont get aqny more error events firing.

 

[dhillier]

Many thanks to Bob Larson for cutting through to the likely version-independent culprit. For the sake of others who update their software more than they use it: In Access 2010 the "Use special access key" switch is located under File/Options/Current Database/