Hi Simon,
>Am I correct in thinking that you should never use a "recovered" DB file.<
Indeed, make sure you have a clone/no records from every file. When you have to recover a file, import the data into the clone and delete the recovered file.
>we cannot add records to the database<
For this we need more info on how the files are built and how new records are made, f.i. passwords/groups, allow creation of records on which level, scripted or not etc.
>we cannot modify a record ie change a Mr to Professor.
Find appeared to be working<
Just guessing, the Mr. field could be a value list (with Mr. Ms. Dr. etc as values). To add Professor or to change the value in that field, the valuelist should hold that value too.
>I am sorry that I cannot give you more info - All I know is that running the recover utility appeared to address the issue.<
Seems strange to me....
>Are there maintenenace practices I should be advising my Clients about. Do I for example need to do a "compress".<
"Maintenance" at technical level is not for the user.
"Maintenance" at user level will be more something like removing hard returns in fields, comma's in names, wrong spelling etc.
Compress is not needed that often, is only used to remove blanc spaces.
A compressed copy is a copy that is optimized for space and consistency, almost like defragmenting a hard disk.
The most important maintenance is backup, backup, backup.
The only sickness who makes you better.
HTH
