Recovering Damaged Databases

If you always have a backup, this shouldn’t be a problem.

  1. Create a copy of the damaged table
    • Never work off the original table/file, damaged or not. If something happens in the process of fixing it or playing around with it, it could mean you’ll spend three times longer getting back to the original.
  2. Open a new table, and structure it like the damaged table
  3. Start copying data cells from the damaged table to the new table
  4. Skip any corrupted data cells (Access won’t let you copy them over anyway)
  5. Once all data cells are copied over, hand write in the corrupted cells into the new table
  6. Open a new Access database
  7. Import the new table (not the damaged one) into Access
  8. Save the new database to the same folder of the damaged database
  9. Find the damaged database in Windows Explorer
  10. Rename the damaged database and delete is .ldb file
  11. Rename the new database to the old name of the damaged database