AccessFIX release history | Cimaware Software

Improved speed of recovery. The scanning phase has been optimized with a 25% speed increase.
"Access violation" error during recovery and before preview. In some cases, external data infiltrations were detected as real data and this could trigger "Access Violation" errors. The new data filtering and validation system detects invalid data more accurately.
Error with tables with no definition. In some cases, when saving a database that contains some tables whose definition is lost (tables with a yellow alert icon in the preview), the recovered file cannot be opened. Fixed.
Unnamed tables optimization to avoid spots in the number sequence.

Lookup fields with multiple values are now recovered.
When a field of type "Attachment" or "Lookup with multiple values" was damaged, the whole table failed to be saved to the output file. Fixed.
Minor improvements in the preview of complex fieds.

Character '%' was not detected as a special character when it was part of a field name in a query. As a result, the field name was not surrounded by quotes. This is now fixed.

Indexes and properties will be removed from the auxiliary tables containing undeleted records to avoid collisions between incompatible indexes or field constraints.
A Database Engine runtime has been included in the AccessFIX package. This way, tables and queries can be saved when there is no Database Engine installed on the system.
Added new Access version checks and related information during the save process.
Save performance has been slightly improved by spacing the target file size checks.
If Microsoft Access is not installed, the destination directory will be opened once the saving process is complete.

Fixed error occurring when saving a recovered Access 95/97 file. The problem was related to AccessFIX connecting to the wrong Access database engine instance when both Access 2019 and Access 97 were installed at the same time.

Now you can choose the Microsoft Access version of the output recovered file no matter which version the original file is. This can be helpful to export forwards and backwards between different Access versions. The available options are Access 95/97, Access 2000, Access 2002/2003 and Access 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019.
Now, when a table definition has invalid content, it is fully discarded and treated as a "definition lost" case. Previous versions tried to fix the invalid definition by heuristic methods but we think that this new strategy will produce better results.
We have filtered from the results the complex field internal tables belonging to system tables as they are useless.
Access 2000 mdb files are saved by default as Access 2002 because it produces better results for forms and reports. Now the default option will be Access 2000 when the database contained only tables and queries.
Minor improvements in the user interface of the "Structure replacement" option.
Other minor improvements.

New checkbox on save options which allows to save only tables and queries.
Minor improvements.

New types of orphan objects are now recovered.
Improved recovery of deleted tables. Now, not only the records but also the table definition can be recovered.

Visual Basic code units for forms and reports have been removed from the "Modules" section. You can preview it in the Forms or Report sections.
Access Violation error while previewing some malformed objects. It didn't affect the save process.
The progress stopped at 64% in files with a damage in a specific internal structure.
Now, when AccessFIX finds orphan Visual Basic code belonging to a form or report, a mock object is created to host it. This way, all the recovered VBA will be in the output file.
Bug fixed. The name assigned to recovered orphan objects was always in English. E.g. "Recovered module 1".

"Interface not supported" error while saving for some Access configurations. Fixed
"#Error" in some numeric fields in the output file. Related to some Access 2000 mdb files. Fixed.

In the table preview all field properties are now displayed when you click on a field.
In the table preview, clicking on a different table resets the selected column and row.
Improved recovery of attachment fields. On previous versions attachment fields could not being detected under certain circumstances. Fixed now.
The uninstall icon was not visible in the start menu in Windows 10. Fixed.

Minor improvements and bug fixes.

Added a new option to limit the amount of records that will be saved to the recovered file. This option is accessible in “Advanced” mode in the first step of the save process by clicking on the bottom-right button “Options”. This is usually useful for large tables when you want to save only a partial set of records. For example it is useful if the Access file exceeded the 2Gb size limit for an accdb or mdb file. In these cases this option will help you to save the data to two different files each one of them with a half of the total records.
Enabled output file size watching for accdb files. This option was already enabled for mdb files. Adding new data to the output file once the file has reached its 2gb limit could corrupt the recovered file as well. The save routine will raise an error if this unwanted condition is reached.
Fixed activation system issues with blocked licenses. If you have installed a license in your system and the license becomes invalid or blocked it can happen in some situations that the software gets trapped in a loop during the software start up with no option to enter a new activation code. Now if the installed license failed to activate during the start up the software enters in demo mode in order to allow the user to enter a new activation code.

This fix will allow now to recover files having its first part damaged or lost. This bug is related to the file version identification of severely damaged mdb or accdb files with versions from 2000 to 2016. It happened when the first part of the file was lost or empty. Then the version recognition heuristic routine identified all files as if they were Access 95/97 files and as a consequence of this no data was found.

“Copy” button enabled in the preview of forms and reports with Visual Basic code. The VBA code if any is copied to the clipboard.

Minor improvements and bug fixes.

A new button has been added in the viewer which allows the user to copy the content of the selected node. Currently the option is enabled for modules and queries.
Update of foundation libraries.
Other minor improvements.

VBA module corruption pattern added. Now modules are recovered in new additional cases.

Attachment fields were not saved in the recovered file when the table name contained the character “_”. Now these fields properly are saved properly.

Recovered queries containing fields named "note" or "version" failed to be saved. These two reserved words are now included in the internal list of AccessFIX and are treated properly and thus these queries are now saved with no issues.

Fixed installer signature in order to have a time stamp and a product url.

Access 2016 compatibility.
Changes in language texts.

Minor improvements and bug fixes.

Objects are stored in a tree structure with many nodes. Now objects are recovered even if the root node is damaged or missing.

As a result of a bug introduced with AccessFIX release 5.104 the interface was being always displayed in English despite the language you set up during the installation. Installing this release will automatically fix this issue.

Improvement of table's preview. Now the selected column will display additional information about the selected field.
Fixed some false positives related to error detection of forms and reports. However this issue didn't affected the recovery results.
Fixed preview of calculated fields. They were saved ok but displayed wrongly in the preview.

Recovery of calculated fields.
New method to recover properties. In previous AccessFIX versions some properties in accdb files could not be saved to the recovered file. Furthermore with mdb files the former method could bring some side effects in some circumstances. With this new version all the properties are properly copied for all Access versions with no side effects.

Internal changes in the installer related to the Windows Registry keys.

Minor changes in texts and urls.

Unicode characters with LSB set to 0 were not properly parsed. Fixed.
Non-wester text in preview table and object names are now properly displayed.

Fixed issues recovering autoinc fields, key fields and relations.

Improved heuristic algorithm to determine the file format version from severely damaged files. Now Access 97 and 2000 file chunks and severely damaged files are recognized and recovered.

Attachment fields are now fully recovered. Some attachment fields are stored internally uncompressed and others compressed. Previous versions were able only to recover uncompressed contents. Access stores uncompressed those data types that are already compressed such as zip, jpeg, etc. Now all attachment fields are recovered.
Some kinds of attachment fields were not recognized during the recovery. Now all the attachment fields are recognized.

The software could not be started in some systems because a bug in the error reporting libraries. Fixed.

Minor improvements and bug fixes.

In some situations text fields in Access 95/97 where stored in a special format which was not recognized by previous versions. Now this texts are also recovered.

Fixed important bug introduced with version 5.81 affecting undelete feature. Therefore undeleted records are not recovered from version 5.81 to 5.94.

Added option to save only the table structure with no records.
Added size checking form mdb output files. If the size is near 2Gb size the save process is stopped in order to avoid an overflow error which would overwrite the file header making the file unusable.

Access 2013 supported.

Fixed important bug introduced with version 5.81 and present in all versions until this one. Queries and other objects were not accessible in the output file.
Added pauses at the end of the save process to avoid opening the file before is completely dumped to the output file.

Fixed bug introduced with version 5.89 affecting the recovery on systems having Access 2003 installed.

Solved some software auto-update issues.

Windows 7 compatibility changes.
Fixed some texts and error messages.

Fixed "Unrecognized file format" for Office 2013 installations while saving the recovered file.

Improved the filter to solve and error "Invalid pointer operation" in some corruption cases.
Macro conditions. Recovery of macros with macro condition IF.

Changed controls to accept file names including non-western characters.
Internal improvements on temporary files.

Attachment fields. Attachment fields are now recovered.

Deep search of lost forms, reports and VBA. Data completely lost and not linked at all in the catalog of a database can now be found. Now AccessFIX search for this objects along the whole file unused areas. Data structures are recognized by its binary "shape".
Improved preview for forms and reports.

Encrypted mdb files are now recovered. For Access file versions 2003 and backwards. Now mdb files encrypted with the Access option "Encode database" are recovered. No configuration is needed by the user since encrypted databases are automatically detected.

In some situations recovering accdb files boolean fields were saved as longint. Fixed.

New feature "Clear permissions". The new menu "Tools" include the new option "Clear permissions". When you set access restrictions for an Access mdb database or any of its contained objects the file gets invisibly linked to the current associated *.mdw file (Microsoft workgroup information file). This file contains user and group security information. If you lost this mdw file the restricted objects in the mdb file will get inaccessible. This new feature in AccessFIX allows you to clear all the permissions in an Access mdb file so that you can open it and access all its content even in the case you do not have the mdw file. It also allows to clear ACL permissions in accdb files.
Fixed a bug related to the internal index of the records in a data page. In some situations this can help to filter wrong data and to avoid unstable states and memory errors.
Minor changes in the GUI.

Although AccessFIX already recovered non-western characters, the preview were not able to display them. Now the control have been replaced to show this now-western texts in the preview.
File version for damaged accdb databases could be misinterpreted in some severely damaged files. Now the file extension is used to determine the Access version of the file. This helps to always parse properly damaged accdb files. In the other side if an accdb file would be renamed with another extension such as mdb the recovery will probably fail.

An Access 2010 installation recovering a 2002/2003 mdb had a problem is some situation which could end up loosing forms/reports from the output file. Now a form is not lost even if the clean up cannot be performed.
Access 2000 invalid table names are now fixed by removing invalid characters.

Added a final clean up after saving Access 2002/2003 forms and reports. This solve some problems related to unresponsive buttons on forms.
Reversed the order while saving forms/reports and macros to avoid problems during the clean up of forms/reports on accdb files.

Access 2002/2003 installations recovering an 2002/2003 mdb database. Although it worked properly with Access 2007/2010 installations, from Access 2002/2003 installations there were a performance penalty. Mbd template updated to fix this issue.

Access 2003 databases being recovered in a 2007/2010 installation. Now the display filters in Access are changed to allow the user to view all the recovered elements.

This version fixed an error introduced with version 5.74 related to the selection of the output version during the save process.
"Replacement structure" file were not working for tables with no records and no definition.

Access 97 file recovery in a PC with Access 2002 installed. Access 2002 cannot save forms, reports and VBA modules into an Access 97 database. Now when this configuration is present the output file will be Access 97 if it only contains tables and/or queries. If it contains other elements the output file will need to be upgraded to Access 2002.
Access 2000 files + Access 2002 installed. Now the 2000 files are upgraded to allow advanced recovery features only available to Access files from version 2002 onwards.

Accdb date-time fields were saved as numbers in the output file. Fixed.

Access 2010 file can now be recovered including forms, reports, Visual Basic and macros.
Accdb purging added during the last stage of the save process in order to remove temporary elements.
Improvements and bug fixes related to the save of forms and reports.

Queries where saved empty if they refer tables or queries containing the "@" character.

Minor changes and bug fixes.

Change in the save strategy of forms and reports.
AccessFIX was unexpectedly closed or it entered in an unstable state when saving very large memo or OLE fields to the output file.
Update of the foundation library.

Minor improvements and bug fixes.

New macro corruption pattern added for Access files from version 2002 onwards.

Minor text changes.

Now linked tables are recovered. The target database/table must be present or otherwise the linked table will not be created in the output file.
Bug recovering SQL queries referencing tables or other elements with the character "~" in their names. The query was saved empty. Fixed.

Fix several bugs introduced with version 5.63 caused by the installation of the new building environment.

Moved to new building environment.
Minor changes.

Minor improvements and bug fixes.

Accdb SQL query bug fixed. "in" keyword was added wrongly in some situations.
Accdb report's Visual Basic code was not recovered.
Accdb new recovery and save methods for forms and reports.
Visual Basic belonging to lost forms and reports is now saved into an empty element.

Minor improvements and bug fixes.

Minor improvements and bug fixes.

Installer changes. Now the software is installed into the current user local directory. This allows the software to be installed by non-admin users. The installation is now visible only for the user who has installed the software.

Added email field on feedback form.
Check for updates feature failed for "all users" installations.

Fix of "RPC server unavailable" in the end phase while saving the recovered file.

Now the summary of a recovered element in the preview is not calculated until the user clicks on it. This makes the preview to be shown quickly. As a side effect the warning icon is not displayed until the user clicks on an element.

AccessFIX error when DEP Windows security feature is activated. Fixed.
Foundation libraries updated.

Bug recovering SQL queries having the keyword "top".
Improved filtering of severely damaged records.
Some Access 95/97 files get stuck at 75%. Fixed.
Added accd* extension filters to the open dialog.
Solved a non reproducible "Access Violation" case from user error reports.
Minor text changes.

GUI progress minor changes.
Access Violation error fix in base to user reports.

License extension link fixed.

Undelete can now recover large memo fields if the underlying data is present. Before only small medium size memo fields were recovered.
Partially damaged or incomplete memo field's data are now also stored in the output file.
Text changes.
Update of foundation libraries.
Improve in preview summaries.

Some recovered records were missing in the recovered output file. The AccessFIX preview was not affected by this bug. This bug occurred when an invalid corrupt record was being saved but the record data were not accepted by Access. Then the save process for this table was completely interrupted leaving the pending records unsaved. Fixed.

Undelete duplicated record detection and removal.

Undelete new pattern. Undelete feature to recover unindexed records from the data page. Raw data is parsed in order to find records in unused areas of the file.
Bug related to unstable/changing record data for undeleted records. Fixed.
Major change in replacement structure file feature.

Windows Vista compatibility issue related to the license activation.
Invoking help returned an "Access violation" error.
Updated foundation library.
AccessFIX cannot handle non-western file names. Now an error is displayed asking the user to rename the file.

Important bug fixed. The bug made tables not being recovered when the table had a boolean column.

Structure replacement file feature improved to work in cases where the provided file has been compacted or it is slightly different from the corrupt one. Now the name of the table is used to locate each corresponding table in the provided structure file. Please note that for tables which have lost the name and have been renamed as "recovered table X" you should also rename that table with the new name in the replacement file.
Partial chunks of files with no headings where parsed as Access 2000 by default. Now a heuristic detection of the format of the file is made before starting the recovery.
Minor GUI glitch in replacement structure file selection.

Full rebuild of saving functions for forms and reports for Access 2002/2003 files.
Fixed error introduced with previous version which can produce unexpected restarting of the software.
Deleting of temporary files created by Access during the save process.

New error reporting system installed in the software to improve the feedback from the user to the devel team.

Access 2002 installations can only open Access 95/97 files as read only. This means that an Access 95/97 databases cannot be used to save the output file. Now in these cases the output file is saved with Access 2002/2003 format.

Access allows an invalid state where a table have a table field marked as "required" but having the table records with that field empty. In these cases those records were not saved. Now an empty value is added to overcome the situation.

Deleted record tables were not create when its table name were too large. Fixed.
SQL Queries having an alias in the "on" part of the "join" clauses were wrongly parsed. The output query were empty in the output file. Fixed.
Minor improvements and bug fixes.

With Access 2002 installations forms, reports, macros and modules could not be saved. Important, if the database being recovered is version 2002/2003 you must set in Access the option in the menu "Tools / Options / Advanced / Default file format" to Access 2002. Leaving Access 2000 will end up with a recovered database containing only tables and queries.
Clicking the "Open" button in the last screen of the save process was not working. A bug in some versions of Access kept Access hidden in the background. Fixed.
Text updates in several languages.

Fixed a bug introduced with previous version (5.36) which made output tables to be empty.
Fixed a bug introduced with previous versions which produced "Access Violation" errors recovering Access 2000 databases.

With Access 2003 installations AccessFIX failed to save some Access 2002 forms and reports due to changes in the CRC calculation of the 2003 version. A new method in explicitly applied in these cases to overcome the issue.
Minor improvements and bug fixes.

SQL queries with a "having" clause resulted in an empty output. Fixed.
When in an SQL query a column had the "as" clause followed by a reserved word such as "date" the needed square bracket were not added resulting in an empty query output.
When in an SQL query having a subquery in the "from" part ended with a semicolon the resulting query output were empty.
Queries having "desc" in the "order by" part resulted in an empty query output.

Recovery speed improved up to 10 times mainly for large databases.

Accdb tables are now recovered. Attachment fields and field properties are not recovered yet.
Accdb forms and reports are now recovered.
Recovery of forms and reports from Access 95, 97 and 2000 have been greatly improved by adding numerous new objects and property types.
Forms and reports for mdb files from Access versions 2002 and 2003 being displayed wrongly as damaged in some cases. Fixed.
The preview of forms and reports include now information about the related VBA code.
Hidden Microsoft Access warnings displayed while saving the recovered file.
Microsoft Access was taken to foreground while saving a recovered accdb database. Now Access is explicitly hidden.

Now Access 97 files can be saved when the installed version is newer. Saving with modern versions such as Access 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007 will allow only to save tables and queries while other objects will be discarded.
Fields of type "Decimal" were not properly saved when the attribute "Scale" is different from 0. Fixed.

Fixed bug introduced with version 5.30 which produced Access Violation errors recovering Access 2000 files.

Improved speed up to 10 times recovering files with a great number of forms, reports or modules for Access 2000 onwards files.
Added new corruption patterns for lost Access 2002/2003 forms and reports.
Added warning icon for empty elements.
Fixed regression which produces an Access Violation error while recovering Access 95/97 files.
Detection of an incompatible Access installation and its corresponding error message.
Moved from DirectAccess DAO 35x to 3x. This will improve recovering of Access 95/97 files.

Installer allows now installing the software for non-admin users.

Changes in installer and licensing.

Accdb files can now be selected.
Improved preview with icons for each element type.
Changes in preview texts.

Installer system updated.
Moving installer links to "All users".

Fixed bug detecting the current version online during the automatic update subsystem.

Changes in the licensing system.

AccessFIX is part now of OfficeFIX 6.
Graphic design changes in progress animations, logo.
Changes in the installer.

Changes in licensing system.

Many files with name error.txt were stored in the output directory after saving a recovered database.

Improved filter for unexpected data in severely damaged records.
Fixed error when closing the software for non-admin users.
Tables which name starts with ~ were invisible in the output file.

Improved speed during save phase.
Fixes and improvements in progress bar.

Texts added in latest releases translated to German, French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese.

Recovery of deleted records (when available).
Improved selection of the output Access version when there are several installed Access versions available at the same time.
Fixed special condition which did not allow some records in the viewer to be saved.

Recovery of forms, reports, macros and modules for Access 2002/2003 files.
Structure replacement file feature improved to work with deleted tables and severe damages.
Greatly increased the speed during save on databases with many forms or reports.
Improvements in the recovery and save progress bars.
Added Access version to the file summary in the preview.
Minor bug fixes and improvements.

VBA module preview improved.
Added multiple corruption patterns which improve the recovery of forms and reports.
Solved some problems recovering forms, reports and modules from Access 95/97 files.
Solved some problems recovering macros from Access 95/97 files.
Fixed problem recovering table indexes in Access 2000 onwards. As a side effect the output file could be affected.
Access 95/97 Text fields recovered in an Access 2000 onwards installation context makes the text to be truncated.
Relations are now created in the output file after storing the records. This allows records even when the referential integrity would not allow it.
Improved the progress bar in the latest stage of the recovery.

Fixed format on bootstrap errors while starting the application.
Drag & drop feature to select the corrupt file.

From this version onwards the installers will be always signed. This allows the user to check the origin an integrity of the software before installing it.
Minor changes in graphic design.

Minor drawing glitches on XP computers.
Fixes in localized texts.

Fixed bug in anti-hacking system.

Increased save speed mainly for large files.
Moved to OfficeFIX 4.
Fixed issues with progress bar.
Improved refresh rate in progress for large files.
Fixed message text after canceling a recovery.
Fixed some wrong colors in the UI.

Fixed preview issues related to the adaptation to the new GUI.
Multi-file progress issues fixed.

File picker did not allow to choose other extensions than mdb.

Summary not displaying the recovered table listing.

Release history

5.131

5.130

5.129

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5.53