Occasionally it is necessary to go from a newer version of something to an older version. Though much of the basic functionality of Access hasn’t changed from the first version, much of the code and background procedures that do the work for you have changed. If it is necessary to revert from the Access 2000 version you are using to a previous version like Access 97, Access lets you export the current database to an older file version.

Before you perform any conversion on a database with multiple users or security features, you must follow a few guidelines:

• If the database you want to convert is stored in a third-party location and can be accessed by others, make sure no one else is using it at the time of conversion.
• If you have used any VBA code in the database and applied the new security features to the database, you must first enter password for the database before converting the file.
• You must enable full read/write/design privileges on the database before converting. If you want to convert a file to Access 97 format and still want to retain some security features of the database, you must open the database in Access 97 first and then apply individual user security access to the database. Consult the Access 97 help file for more information on database security.

In most cases, you would do the following. Open the database file you want to revert and click Tools à Database Utilities à Convert Database à To Access 97 File Format. The Convert Database Info dialogue box will appear, let you pick a save location, and specify a file name:

Depending on how your database is structured, you may encounter the following warning:

More complex databases containing underlying code that has been constructed by hand might not work properly with a straight conversion. Fortunately, all versions of the Access program have thorough error checking. When you open the exported database in a different version of Access, the program will go through any missing or incomplete components that might have appeared during the conversion process one at a time to get your database back up and running.

Once you have converted a database file to an older file version, any functionality specific to Access 2000 or 2003 will not be usable in Access 97 simply because the functionality did not exist in Access 97. Access warns you about this fact; click OK to complete the conversion process.