Having a Closer Look at Backup and Restore Process in MS Access 2013
Performing regular backups is the best strategy against any type of data disaster. There is no definitive solution to avert data loss, however, backups are a medium to save business downtime if you anyhow happen to lose this vital asset. MS Access users also suffer from data loss due to intermittent corruption encountered in Access databases. If you have a backup of your database, it could save you precious time that would have been otherwise wasted in rebuilding the entire database from scratch.
When the Undo command fails to reverse an action or a mistake, you can restore the correct version of an object or the entire database from a backup. A typical example of this scenario is when running an action query to make changes to your database. The changes made by the action query to the data cannot be reversed using Undo.
In case your Access database is shared with other users, make sure that there are no active connections to this database before starting to back it up. Use the below mentioned tips to decide when to back up and how often to back up:
The job of performing database backups is a cinch with MS Access. During the backup process, all the currently opened objects are saved and closed by Access. Once this is done, the copy of your entire database file is saved at your specified location. When the backup is finished, all objects are reopened by reading the value of each object's Default View property.
Open the database you need to back up and perform the following steps:
If you have split your database into back-end and front-end, you need to follow a different approach to backup. The back-end database contains all the database tables, whereas the front-end database comprises links to these tables and all interface objects.
If you go for backing up the two databases separately, it would be time consuming. Instead, you should opt for backing up your back-end database on a routine basis as it contains all data within your Access database. You should perform backups for the front-end database when you make design changes to this database.
Before backing up your back-end database, you should inform all the users who have access to this database. During the backup process, users may not be able to access this database.
Follow the given steps to back up your back-end database:
Follow the same method for backing up a database described in 'Backing Up a Database' section above.
For restoring a database, you require a good known backup copy of this database. A good known backup copy is the one that maintains data integrity and design. The restore process will wind up replacing the original copy of your database that has missing data or corruption in a few objects.
For restoring your database, you just need to copy the database backup to the location where your original database file is present. When you are asked to replace the existing file, click 'Yes'.
If you have the need to restore just a few objects in your database, import these objects from the backup database copy into the original database file.
To restore individual objects to your database, follow the given steps:
In case there are other programs and databases that refer to the objects you are restoring, you have to restore the database to the correct location in order for preserving the links of other databases to these objects.