Version History

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How many versions of Access are there?

Access 1.0 was the initial version of Access, released before Christmas and running on Windows 3.1x. It sold quickly and was soon replaced.

Access 1.1 which was a fair version with bugs taken out. It wasn't until

Access 2.0 that Access became an institution in itself. A lot of old timers who were dBase, Clipper, FoxPro, Paradox developers decided that Access 2 was worth working in. Access 2.0 was for a long time, favoured, especially since it was patched with the Access Service Pack, a 2 diskette affair, available free. It works well on 32 bit Windows (Windows '95 and NT) but of course misses out on a lot of the 32bit Application Programming Interface and can't work with long file names. Until late December 1999, Access 2.0 had Y2K problems. Get the latest patch from Microsoft.

Access '95 was actually a major overhaul. If you listen to the community, it had it's share of new bugs, is slower than Access 2.0 and changed not only file format but also programming language from Access Basic to VBA. There are two very necessary patches to Access '95 that you MUST get from the Microsoft website if you want to do any serious programming (VBA) in it. See here. Access '95 also has Y2K problems. Get the latest patch for Office '95 from Microsoft.

Access '97 was a goodie. The file format was again changed, VBA was now more mature and there are some nice features for you when you edit your program. There is a built-in tabbed dialog control which makes Forms much more usable again. It is than Access '95 and Access 2000.

Access 2000 has major architectural changes. It is slow and buggy. You need to apply Office Service Release 1 at least, and if you are not running Outlook, do SR-2 as well. (Outlook features "break" a bit with SR-2). You are recommended to apply Jet 4.0 SP6.

SR-1 fixes cover a whole range of issues. If you have a fast Internet connection, you can get SR1 incrementally else, get it as a whole file - O2ksr1adl.exe.

Q246953 BUG: Access 2000 Quit Method Leaves Access Running

Q255901 ACC2000: New Data in an ADP File Is Displayed Incorrectly in a Text Box That Has a Default Value

Q257589 ACC2000: Fixed Width Fonts in Reports Are Printed Incorrectly

Q269698 ACC2000: Slow Response Opening a Form in Design View

Q271249 ACC2000: Cannot Print Non-ASCII Unicode Characters

Q276270 DataSourceControl ConnectionTimeOut Property Is Ignored

Q280433 ACC2000: Unexpected Project Corruption in Access Database

Q280521 ACC2000: "Save Record" Toolbar Button Is Unavailable When AllowEdits Property Is Set to No (False)

You can't apply SR-2 without doing SR-1 first. Once you have applied SR-1, you can get SR-2 incrementally or as one file - Sp2upd.exe

Access 2002 / XP is the current release. It can use Access 2000 file format without problems but if you want to make a compiled .mde or .ade, you need to change the file format.

Q295358 - ACC2002 What's New and What Are the Enhancements in Access 2002