System Failures

[Andrew Thorpe]

Access 2016 (bought as pre-loaded on a Dell). Strange phenonema recently both on desktop and laptop. In form or report design, after grouping two objects and using Left/Right align or sizing to smallest/largest, it works the first time, although it leaves the options box on the screen. Next time I try the same feature, it does nothing at all. I then have to close Access, re-open and then carry on.

When I first bought both the laptop and desktop, I found that in table design, I was not able to select different sorts of Number (eg Long Integer etc); but that cured itself after a while. I'm wondering if a Windows update has caused this. Any info would be much appreciated.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

If you have an Office installation kit, do a "repair" installation and double check all of the features that you wanted to see. That shouldn't ask for your license again since it is just a repair. See if things behave better.

I'm betting against a Windows Update having anything to do with it. But I believe that by default, particularly if this happens to be Win10, it is set to download any other updates that might be available for MS software - like Office. So a parallel Office update might have done something hinky.

 

[Andrew Thorpe]

Although I didn't have a disk (hardly anyone does now, I think), I pressed F1 for Help and went to the "Repair" section and I chose Online Repair. It's hard to be certain with any sort of intermittent issue, but I do believe it has solved the problem, so a huge thank you!!

Whilst in the section, I noticed that I seem to have two copies of Office:

Microsoft Office Professional 2016 en-us
Microsoft Office Professional 2016 nl-nl

I feel I ought to try and remove the second one, but am afraid of losing everything!! If you have any thoughts on that, I'd be most grateful. In the meantime, many thanks again for your help.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

That is actually a crucial observation. I wonder which one is being automatically patched when you take Office patches.

If you don't have TOO many apps on which to try this, open an App in a way that lets you see the ribbon. Under File tab, click Help and look on the right side of the resulting display to see which version you are using.

I'm thinking that by having two versions installed, you are asking for issues because it would have two copies of some libraries and the updater might only update one of them. That "nl" version might be "Netherlands" and you're in England. Is there a reason why you would have a Dutch version of Office? Do you NEED a Dutch version? If not, I would say get rid of it and then do one more repair followed by a manual update of office (perhaps by triggering a manual Windows update).

 

[Andrew Thorpe]

Many thanks. I've uninstalled the nl version. I'm sure it was Dutch because all the prompts were in a language that looked like it. It all seems to be running a bit quicker now as well. I will let it settle and then go for the Repair again.

Thanks again for all your help; it's very much appreciated.