[dtrulez]

Hey I have a guy at my job who managed to delete one of his tables without backing it up at all. So I tried a few online searches and found some code that would fix it but he managed to close the application and thus renedered the code obselete.

But I have some pretty good data recovery software and I think it should be able to recover the temp file that is created when one deletes a table.

So my question is does anyone know where Access 97 stores those tmp files that they create. I read that when you delete a table it makes a ~tmp file that it stores until you save or close the application. If I can find out where that ~tmp file is located I will be able to get the software to recover the file and then restore it.

If anyone can help me that would be great.

 

[Jimmy the Hand]

Hi.

I don't know the answer, but I did a test. Deleted a table from an Access DB, and compared system snapshots, before and after. In the Docs&Settings\LoginName\Application Data\Temp folder there were 2 new files. Something like:

JET6175.tmp 0 bytes
~DF6E92.tmp 512 bytes

I guess these are randomly generated filenames, but one of them always started with JET, which is telltale, I think. About the other, the only significant info I found is that it's time of creation was exactly the same as that of JET####.tmp. It's not much but may be enough to recognize them.

Then I discovered that these files are created when the database is opened, not when a table is deleted. So I'm not sure if they contain any recoverable data. Also, I discovered that if the DB contains macro code, and the security settings are such that, before opening the DB, Access asks for permission for macro codes, the ~DF$$$$.etc. temp file is created later than JET####.tmp. The difference was 2 seconds, probably the time it took me to click on Enable button.

Hope this helps to start.

Jimmy