Saturday, December 19, 2009

“You requested an invalid file...” Error post Access database corruption

Microsoft Access database corruption primarily occurs due to application malfunction, operating system corruption, poor structuring of the database, improper system shutdown, and virus attacks. You can identify corruption in database by an error message, which pops up during opening or mounting of database, updating records, scrolling through the records, or running reports, queries, and forms. A major problem that you might encounter after the occurrence of the error message is inaccessibility of database records. For easy surpassing of any database corruption issue, an ideal way is to restore the data from an updated backup. While the presence of an updated backup resolves all the corruption issues, its absence leaves you with no option, but to repair the corrupted database. To successfully repair your database, you will need to use advanced access repair application.

Picture a scenario, where you receive the below error message when you attempt to access the records stored in your Access database:

“You requested an invalid file. The file may be corrupt. Contact the person who created the file
and request a new copy”

Records saved in your Access database become inaccessible after the above error message appears. Furthermore, the same error message appears each time you attempt to mount your database.

Cause:

As the above error message states, the database file is invalid as it might be corrupted.

Resolution:

The resolution for the above error message is repairing of database using “Compact and Repair”. For orderly compact and repair, you will need to follow the below steps:

1.Click on 'Tools' option in the menubar and select 'Database Utilities'.
2.Click on 'Compact and Repair Database' option and select the database in the ‘Database to Compact From’ dialog box. Click 'Compact'.
3.Save the new repaired file after providing a valid name.
4.Click on 'Save'.

While compacting and repairing the database resolves your problem in most situations, it fails to repair in case the database is severely corrupted. To repair severely corrupted databases, you will need to opt for advanced Access Repair tools. Such access database repair software can be easily downloaded from the Internet and understood even by a non-technical user.

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