Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 24: Optimizing Access Applications

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The Access .accdb format supports several new features, such as multivalued fields and attach-

ments, not available in previous versions (.mdb). The new file format can’t be opened or linked to

earlier versions of Access (although you can link tables in earlier versions to an .accdb file). The

.accdb file format doesn’t support replication or user-level security. If you need to use an Access

2010 database with earlier versions of Access or use replication or user-level security, you must use

the .mdb file format.

You can open and even run Access 97 database files, but you can’t make any design changes in the

Access 97 .mdb file. You can open Access 2002–2003 and Access 2000 database files and make

any desired changes to them. However, you’ll only be able to use features specific to those ver-

sions. Some of the new Access features won’t be available, particularly those features that rely on

the ACE database engine.

The default database file format in Access 2007 and 2010 is .accdb. You can convert a database

saved in a previous format by opening the database in Access 2010, clicking the File menu in the

upper-left corner of the main Access screen to open the Access Options dialog box, and selecting

the Share tab. The Share tab (see Figure 24.2) includes a number of options for saving the current

database in a number of different Access formats (.accdb, 2002–2003 .mdb, 2000 .mdb, and so

on), or saving individual objects, such as forms or reports, in .pdf or .xps formats.

FIGURE 24.2

The Share tab under the File menu lets you save the current database in a number of different file formats.