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Last updated: 7 Jul 2001
If you have compressed the .dbf file then the records have been erased and cannot be recovered.
If you haven't compressed the database then what you need to do is in some way remove the "deleted" tag from the records. You can't do this within Approach. You can do this in some other database software, or you can get utilities designed for the purpose. One that has been recommended on the mailing list is a small freeware tool called Database Manager, which can be downloaded from http://www.inner-smile.com/ Make sure you read the readme.txt file carefully. You find it has three levels of access, and recovering deleted records requires full access. Unless you speak German you may find the tooltips in the Options dialog box a little hard to read ... A more serious limitation with the current version (v2.1) is that is it not possible to open any dBase IV that has a memo field (*.dbt). To get around this, export the memo field to a temporary database, then delete the memo field in the original database. Use Database Manager to recover the deleted records, then re-create the memo field and import the information back into the memo field from the temporary database.
Another method to recover delete records is to create an ODBC data source using the MS dBase driver. Select the option to show deleted records. Open the dbf with this driver then export to a new dbf file to recover the deleted records.
It is also possible to recover records by opening the .dbf in a text editor, and replacing the asterisk at the beginning of a deleted record with a space character. However, this is not recommended!