When will Access 97 / 2003 be completely unsupported by MS

[ben_trewhella]

Good afternoon all,

I hope someone may be able to help me. I'm having to upgrade a client's database from Access 97 to a newer version of Access, due to their IT service upgrading opsys to Windows XP. This is all fine, but quite rightly they are asking when the next upgrade will be required. If I opt for Access 2000/2003, when can they expect to perform the next upgrade? It may be worth them investing in moving to SQL server if it is in the near future.

Could anyone point me in the direction of projected Microsoft support dates for databases, or when people such as your good selves see them as becoming redundant? It would also be helpful to know if people have had trouble moving from Access 97 to 2000/2003.

Thanks everyone

[LICKY]

From Access 2000 onward the default format is Access 2000. I run Access XP (2002) at work and Access 2003 at home. Thus backward compatability is not an issue. At my work we have just converted over to Office XP Professional and I had to convert all our old Access 97 database. There was no major problems, just some minor VB code issues. We also migrated to Windows XP at the same time.

The only problem I have found is that Access XP cannot open versions prior to Access 97.