Backing up an Access database

Q I have an Access database and a friend of mine goes on about the dangers of not backing up – he’s the prophet of doom bar none.

The two books I have about databases make it clear that backing up a database is complex – log files, table spaces etc. What are all these bits and what is the easiest way to do a backup?
Stephen Fryar

A Most databases, as you point out, store a variety of components in a range of different places and this does, indeed, make backing up difficult.

The good news is that all the components of an Access database are stored within a single file.

This has the extension .mdb so, if you simply close the database and then make a backup copy of the mdb file, you have backed up the database. To make life even easier, the more recent versions of Access have a ‘Back Up Database’ option under the file menu.

The above is almost always true, the only exception being when you create ‘Data Access Pages’ within Access. These pages are stored separately and need to be backed up separately.

However, as long as you don’t use Data Access Pages, backing up Access databases is very simple.

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