Microsoft Access is database management software and is widely used for supporting databases both big and small. It provides a powerful backend to save and manage data and a front end for developing applications for the databases. Microsoft Access has been the first choice for many tears now and is still proving itself by improvising itself with every release of the new version and providing more and more advanced features to its users. With every new version something or the other changes in all the applications, and this requires the old files to be upgraded as per the new format so that they can be efficiently used by the new version. Just like Microsoft Office 2007 started using a new format called as DOCX for its Word files which was earlier as DOC. Though Word 2007 can edit and create the old DOC type of files but all the features of Word 2007 will not work in DOC files. Same is the case with Microsoft Access. Microsoft Access 2003 can read the old Version 2.0 type files but it needs to rewrite them according to the new version to make them workable. Let us see how we can change the old MS Access Version 2.0 databases in to the new MS Access version 2003 database.
To do the same please open MS Access 2003 on your computer and then close any file or database if open. Click on the File menu and then click on the Open option. When you get the open box browse to the old version 2.0 database file and select it to open. Make sure that you have selected All Files in the Files of Type drop down other wise your old files will not be visible in the open box of MS access 2003. Once you select the file click on open and it will open in MS Access 2003. Now to save the file according to the new version just click on the File menu again and select Save As. In the Save As box the Files Type should be Microsoft Access 2003 and save the file by the same name or any other name. Saving the file with the same name won’t be any problem because the old and the new files would have different extensions so they can have same names. That is all. You just converted your old MS Access Database into the new MS Access 2003 format.
Converting the database to the new format could be easy but it would be of no use if your database application cannot work on it. With the upgrade of your database make sure that the application is also upgraded and if your database is shared then all the computers sharing this new 2003 formatted database should also have the new version of database application. If you do not update the database application on all the computers then all of them would not be able to write to the new database file and thus will create problems. It is advised that you upgrade the database with the help of your database administrator so that he can make the other necessary changes as well.
