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Why is Access giving me an error stating "Cannot open database ''. It may not be a database your application recognizes, or the file may be corrupt.?"

Anonymous
2013-03-05T17:02:16+00:00

I am not doing anything out of the standard of importing data, and running a few queries. It works find for a little while, but then it decides to give this message. (Cannot open database ''. It may not be a database your application recognizes, or the file may be corrupt.) I am not doing anything but importing a text file, trying to export a text file from a query or table, trying to append data from one table to another etc. Once this error happens the database being use becomes useless and no amount of compacting and repair seems to help.

I have worked with this application for 10 years and never seen this happen. I tried a re-install and still no luck. Any point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Access | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-03-06T16:51:46+00:00

    Bob,

     

    As a matter of fact it has. It is at 2GB exactly. Why would this have an effect on the functionality?

     

    Thank you,

    Considering that the maximum file size for an Access database is 2GB (and that is including System Data that the db uses), that would be the problem.

    You may want to move to SQL Server Express which can hold 10Gb of data.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-03-05T22:24:28+00:00

    When the error occurs check to see that your database file size hasn't hit 2Gb or close to 2Gb has it?

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-03-05T18:51:58+00:00

    Have you created a new file and imported all objects from the old file?

    The Access file container can become corrupt and Repair & Compact will not fix it.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-03-06T16:25:38+00:00

    Bob,

    As a matter of fact it has. It is at 2GB exactly. Why would this have an effect on the functionality?

    Thank you,

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-06-06T16:52:57+00:00

    I ran into the same problem, also got the error message "No search key can be found in any record."  When I tried to import a file.  I suspect the problem is related to the size of your database.  Access databases are limited to 2.0 GB.  Here's a link to the spec: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/access-2010-specifications-HA010341462.aspx#_Toc296343503 .  I was having the problem with a couple of dB's I created but only after I had been working in them for some time.  

    In looking at the database properties the size for all of them was 1.99-2.0 GB.  Every time I tried to run an action query or import a file of course the database size had to increase but I was bumping up against the 2.0GB limit.  The error messages had nothing to do with telling me what was really happening.  Something like "You have reached the maximum size for this database." would have been a bit more revealing.

    Hope this helps.

    Bill

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