Best Practices When Using MIE Software Products

MIE Software products are database products, utilising Microsoft Access as the basic database. To keep databases as optimised and accurate as possible, we recommend the following practices.

These practices are based on advice from Microsoft and from our own experiences dealing with problems that our users have encountered.

Verify That the Latest Operating System Service Pack Is Installed
Install the latest operating system service pack. This makes sure that you have the latest bug fixes.

To verify that you have the latest service packs installed for your operating system, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com.

If you are in a network environment, it is important to make sure the network file server has the latest operating system service pack to make sure that it has the latest bug fixes for the network redirector and file system.

Verify That the Latest Microsoft Office Service Pack Is Installed and that All Users are Using the Same Version of Microsoft Access
Install the latest Microsoft Office service pack. This makes sure that you have the latest bug fixes to Microsoft Access and Microsoft Jet (the default database engine for Microsoft Access).

To determine what Microsoft Office downloads you need, visit the Microsoft Office Product Updates web site:
http://office.microsoft.com/ProductUpdates/default.aspx

If you are working in a network environment, you must install the latest Microsoft Office service pack on all client computers. You do not have to install the Microsoft Office service pack on the network file server unless the network file server also runs one or more applications that use Microsoft Access.

Use the Full Version of Microsoft Access Rather Than the Run Time Version
Utilising the full version of Microsoft Access makes it easier to determine the product version and allows access to the software source code. This makes it easier for us to check your software and data and provide better support.

Use Safeguarded Compacts to Compact and Repair Your Data Files Regularly and Whenever a Program Terminates Abnormally
Environmental factors may leave your data files damaged. The symptoms of a corrupted data file can range from no visible symptoms to '#Deleted' appearing in certain records, to the inability to open one of the objects in the database, to the complete inability to open the file in Access. For more information on causes of corruption, visit our support article at http://www.miesoftware.com/Support/Articles/ols45.htm

The Compact/Repair utilities that Microsoft Access provides are built into our current software products as Safeguarded compacts. These utilities are both for optimising normal data files and recovering damaged data files.

We recommend that you run safeguarded compacts of at the following times.

1. Before you perform your daily backup, run Safeguarded compacts of any event data files(files ending in .eve), contact manager data files (files ending in .cmd) and membership manager data files (files ending in .mmd) that have been updated that day. This both checks that the data files are not corrupted and minimises their size. We recommend that you use Summit SafeGuard to do this.
2. Before starting work on a data file for the first time each day. There is no point in entering data into a potentially corrupt data file.
3. After EVERY time one of our programs does not terminate normally by the user clicking the Exit button, for example, power failure, network failure, invalid page fault, general protection error or accidentally hitting the Restart button on your computer before Microsoft Windows has been shut down. In this case, run Safeguarded compacts of all data files, REGARDLESS of whether or not they have been updated that day.

If a Compact/Repair operation does not complete successfully contact your supplier or MIE Software (http://www.miesoftware.com). DO NOT continue to use the data file as you may be creating further corruptions and rendering a potentially recoverable data file as unrecoverable and IMMEDIATELY make a backup of the corrupted file. Do not attempt to open the backup copy in any way.

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