It's basically telling me "decompile" isn't a valid command.

Ugh, ok, got past the decompile issue... A recent windows update switched me from "Command" to "Powershell" in Terminal and powershell didn't recognize the command. Unfortunately, didn't resolve anything - Still won't compile and says files are missing. All references are intact so I guess tomorrow I'll start moving the objects into a fresh file.

Before you start rebuilding objects, did you completely shut down and restart everything - Access, the laptop, and any external drives or network connections involved? Sometimes after a power event, Windows or Access can be left holding onto a bad file handle or connection even though everything appears to be back online.

Since the database was open when the power dropped, make a backup copy first, then try Compact and Repair on a copy of the file. If it still will not compile after a restart, importing the objects into a new blank database is a reasonable next step. That can clear out corruption in the container that is not obvious from the references list.

Also, this is exactly why I recommend a UPS battery backup. Your laptop battery saved the laptop, but the monitors, external devices, router, and anything else connected to wall power still took the hit. A decent UPS gives everything a few minutes to ride through a short outage and, just as importantly, protects against the little power glitches that can cause trouble.

Here in SW Florida we get afternoon thunderstorms almost every daym. I've got UPSes throughout my whole house. Lol.

When I lose power at work, I have problems until I cycle power on my Dell "docking station", along with the laptop.  Appearantly, they have firmware in them too.

Richard I rebooted everything to be safe early on. However in this case, I haven't split the database yet so the file is located on the laptop. My most recent backup was about 10-mins before the power snap so worst case scenario, I'm not losing a ton. I literally was just getting ready to click save/close to make another backup when it went out because I was almost finished coding another form.

As for the UPS, yeah, I have to make some adjustments. I gave mine up for my mother's medical equipment and just have to get off my... and put it back on my computer equipment since she passed.

Donald press Win + R and and type cmd the press Shift + Enter to run command line as admin and run this
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\MSACCESS.EXE" /decompile "C:\Databases\Quick Try\Actual Live Version.ACCDB"
(don't forget the double qoutes at the beginning and at he end of the code) or Run powershell as admin and run this
& "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\MSACCESS.EXE" /decompile "C:\Databases\Quick Try\Actual Live Version.ACCDB" (same dont forget the qoutes AND THE AMPERSAND at the beginning !!!!)
after executing one above open your project shift pressed thentry debuging and compact & repair.

Apologies for the typos, guys. Double De Quervain's sometimes limits not only just my thumbs but my fingers strength while typing, and I submitted before realizing it.

Matt, yes, docking stations have firmware in them too. Sometimes they can crash because of a power outage, wrong handling, etc., and need to be flashed again.

A Thanks, that is what I had done, but it failed, but the tip about the ampersand in front for powershell is good to know, thanks!

Yeah, surge protection and battery backup are no joke, especially down here in the lightning capital of the United States. I keep everything in my office on UPS units, including the laptops. Even though a laptop has its own battery, that little power brick plugged into the wall can still get fried by a spike.

My router, modem, Wi-Fi, monitors, and even the office lights are all on UPS power. The only exception is the printer, because printers have weird power requirements and I print something maybe once a month - usually an Amazon return. Lol.

I also have a whole-house surge protector installed by my electrician, plus a whole-house battery backup that runs about half of the house. It is 110V only, so it doesn't cover the 220V circuits, but I had a separate junction box installed for it.

We get enough lightning around here that someone is on the news almost every month because of a lightning-related house fire or worse. So yes, it is definitely worth getting that UPS back on your computer equipment.

FYI, you can get a decent UPS now for under $60. They're a lot more affordable than they used to be.

For smaller, less critical items, I use the inexpensive CyberPower ST425 units. They're great for things like Wi-Fi routers, cable modems, TVs, lights, and other low-power equipment where I mainly want protection from those annoying little one- or two-second power outages. I don't expect these little units to keep a computer running for half an hour. They're basically there to keep small electronics from rebooting every time the power flickers and to provide another layer of surge protection. There's nothing worse than having a two-second power outage interrupt an episode of Star Trek.

For my important equipment, I use the larger CyberPower CP1500. That's what I put on things like my main computer/server, router, cable modem, and other equipment that I really don't want going down. It has a much larger battery and can keep everything running considerably longer. Even though I have a whole-house battery backup, I still keep UPS units on the critical equipment. Think of them as a second line of defense. The UPS handles the immediate power interruption, and the house battery takes over from there.

I've used APC and Tripp Lite units over the years too, but I've had the best luck with CyberPower. They seem to last longer for me. Yes, you can replace the batteries in many of these units, but I've found that by the time an older UPS needs a battery, the cost of the replacement battery plus the hassle of taking the thing apart often makes buying a new UPS more attractive. Your mileage may vary, but that's generally what I do.

Full disclosure: yes, those are my Amazon affiliate links. I'll get something like three cents if you buy one. LOL. But my rule has always been that I don't recommend products to you guys unless I actually use them myself. I've bought multiple CyberPower UPS units over the past few years, both the smaller and larger models, and they've worked very well for me. I use them throughout my own home and office, and I stand behind the recommendation.

Yeah, my current UPS was 59.99 last year as I don't have as much critical stuff. The plan was to get a few more for my hardware and mother's equip, but never got around to it and now still just putting what I already have here to best use before getting more.

Through extensive testing across various versions of Access on my old laptop to track down and recreate a similar scenario, I managed to trigger a very similar issue, though not entirely identical to yours, Donald. Regardless of what I tried—including my own previous suggestion—I couldn't get Access to respond correctly or allow me to edit my code.

As a next step, I created a fresh DB and started importing objects one by one: first the tables, then queries, modules, and finally forms and reports. I imported the tables all at once as a group, assuming they weren't the cause, but I did the other objects one at a time.

During the transfer of that specific form I was working on, the one I was working on just to simulate the issue, things got messy. Access froze and threw a bunch of different errors -even a RAM fault error- rather than just a single not responding or error message. Every time I tried, it was something different.

Once I excluded that broken form, all the other forms, reports, and codes worked seamlessly. So, instead of losing all my hard work, the fix came down to simply redesigning and recoding that single form.

I'm not sure if this exact approach will solve it for you, Donald, but it's definitely worth a shot.

It would be interesting to save the damaged form as text and compare to the undamaged form (as text).

Yes, sometimes Access objects just get corrupted for no apparent reason. It's not just Access, either. I've seen similar weirdness happen with just about every programming application I've worked with.

A's experience is a good example of why importing objects into a fresh database one at a time can be helpful. It lets you identify the specific object causing the trouble instead of throwing away the whole database. And Matt's suggestion of exporting the damaged form as text and comparing it to a good copy could be interesting too, especially if you have a recent backup of that form.

The big lesson here is backups. Good backups, multiple rotating backups, and frequent backups. A 10-minute-old backup is an inconvenience, not a disaster.

Yeah, in my situation it narrowed down to 3 forms that were open at the time of the power spike. I had literally just created a backup right before starting on them and was getting ready to do a backup as I had finished the 3rd. The 3 were a parent form and a sub form with another sub form (cascading) so the VBA was intertwined. Once I copied everything to a new shell, everything was good except that those 3 wouldn't even copy normally so I had to copy/paste the objects in each form to fresh forms and rebuild their VBA from scratch.

Since they were new, I didn't have a backup to try to export/compare.

My issue for this post was less about the recovery and more just about the problem with "decompile" which resolved when I figured out I had to switch to CMD Prompt and then again with A's suggestion of the ampersand in PowerShell. But hopefully it may serve as a cautionary tale for others to get a UPC/Surge protection on their devices!

Matt I was thinking exact same thing and wanted to export both the intact and corrupted forms as text files to inspect the underlying cause. However, any attempt to modify or save the corrupted form triggers the exact same errors. I even tried exporting it programmatically, but the result was unfortunately the same, the corrupted form simply can't be saved. It is most likely marked as unreadable/unrecoverable by Access due to issues like parsing errors or corrupted P-code pointers, making any operation on it impossible.

I will talk about this in the next Quick Queries video: https://599cd.com/QQ