Repairing a damaged database

On rare occasions you may find that you are unable to open a database, or, if you can open it, that its behavior is unpredictable. It is more than likely that the database has somehow become damaged. This can be caused, for instance, by a power failure when you are trying to write to the database, or by a general hardware fault. Repair Database will try to solve any such problems.

In addition, you may have deleted data from the database and therefore wish to reclaim space that is no longer used. Compact Database compresses the database and frees up the unused space.

Ability combines these operations in the one command.

To repair and compact a database, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you are in the Ability Database Window but that the database you want to repair is not open (select Close Database from the File menu to close the current database).

  2. Select Compact and Repair Database from the Tools menu.

  3. In the Database to Compact From box select the required database.

  4. The title of the box will change to Compact Database Into. Give the database a new name in the File name line and click on Save.

  5. After a few seconds the database will be compacted and repaired.

Note that you can now delete the old database and rename the new one with the original name, if you wish.