ACC2000: Prompt to Convert Northwind When Chosen from MRU List

Novice: Requires knowledge of the user interface on single-user computers.

If you select Northwind from the most recently used (MRU) file list in the opening dialog box of Microsoft Access, you may get a prompt to either convert or open the database.

You will experience this behavior when there was an earlier version of Microsoft Office or Access on the computer and you did not explicitly include the sample database Northwind.mdb when you set up this version.

To open the Access 2000 version of the sample database Northwind.mdb, follow these steps:

1. Close Microsoft Access.
2. On the Start Menu, point to Settings, and click Control Panel.
3. In Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs.
4. In the Add/Remove Program Properties dialog box, select the Install/Uninstall tab and select Microsoft Office 2000 from the program list. Click Add/Remove.
5. Click Add or Remove Features.
6. Click the plus signs (+) until you see a tree structure like the one below:

      Microsoft Office
         Microsoft Access for Windows
            Sample Databases
               Northwind Database
   					

7. For Northwind Database, click Run from My Computer, and then click Update Now.
8. Start Access.
9. In the Microsoft Access dialog box, click Cancel.
10. On the File menu, click Open.
11. Browse to the folder where Office is installed, and then open the Samples folder. Select Northwind, and then click Open.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Access.

The earlier versions of Microsoft Office and Access install the sample database Northwind.mdb by default. The default setting in this version is to install the Northwind.mdb the first time that you try to use it. However, Setup does not remove data files, so the earlier version of Northwind.mdb remains on the computer. Because the computer already has a copy of Northwind.mdb, Access attempts to open the earlier version instead of installing the sample database that ships with Office and Access 2000.