In most cases, Access detects whether an Access database (.mdb) is damaged when you try to open it, and displays a dialog box that gives you the option to repair it.

Usually, you can successfully recover a damaged database by doing one of three things:

• Repair the database from the dialog box that Access displays when it detects a damaged database.
• On the Tools menu in Access, point to Database Utilities, and then click Compact and Repair Database.
• Run Microsoft Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) code that uses the CompactDatabase method of either Microsoft Jet and Replication Objects (JRO) or Microsoft Data Access Objects (DAO).

Sometimes, these utilities will fail. Microsoft Product Support Services provides an additional, unsupported database-compacting utility named the Jet Compact Utility (Jetcomp.exe), which might be able to recover some databases that the standard compacting utilities cannot. This is because the standard utilities attempt to open and close a database before compacting it. If these utilities cannot reopen the database, compacting cannot proceed, and the database cannot be recovered. The Jet Compact Utility does not attempt to open and close the database before compacting, and may be able to recover some damaged databases that the standard utilities cannot.

For information about downloading the Jet Compact Utility, see the article Q295334, ACC2002: Jet Compact Utility Available in Download Center, on the Microsoft Product Support Services Web site.