Monday, May 17, 2010

Access database becomes inaccessible in case of indexes corruption

Indexes in MS Access works as a pointer which helps in locating a particular record in the table in much faster duration and thus brings down the turnaround time than usual. Using this data structure a very large database can be handled easily in access.However, sometimes the indexes in Access get corrupt, making you unable to access and use the database.There could be various reasons such as power surges, damaged MS Office or operating system, virus infections, etc. In such cases, you should use access recovery tool to recover Access file. However, if you are unable to do so then you should use third-party MDB recovery software to recover Access database.

Consider a scenario wherein you are working on an Access database. In this, you are importing data to a table from another one. However, you fail to do so. An error message is displayed, that is:
“Operation failed - too many indexes - reduce the number and try again.”

Cause:
The root cause of the aforementioned error message is that the table in which you are importing data is corrupt, which is causing the issue. Because of this, the index definitions have corrupted. While importing data from a table, Access first imports the table definition and then the data. It then applies the indexes. As the indexes definitions are corrupted, the error message is displayed. However, this issue can also occur while working with the relationships window.

Resolution:
To resolve this error message and import the table content safely, you should perform the following steps:
  • Create a blank copy of the table.
  • Remove all the indexes.
  • Execute an Append query and move the data from the original table to the new one.
  • Recreate the indexes.
  • Move the new table to a new database file. This should resolve the issue.
However, if you are still not able to address the situation then you should use third-party Access repair software to recover Access file. Such read-only tools are able to recover Access database without overwriting the original file.

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