New here. Circa 2000, as a rank amateur, released an Access 2000 .mde split BE FE with .mdw project to several friends. Worked well for them in each of their individually managed enterprises and all original folk use the program to this day on their LANs. Working from the "Development" .mdb, updates, additions and corrections were made and released via .mde's in the first several years. After all the kinks were ironed out there was little to do but rare fixes until circa 2010 when some code began to fail. I recall a few hundred hours over a few months of hacking away at the VBA to bring the program up to date for machines with Access 2010 or later installed and have not heard a peep until recently. Began receiving friendly requests to bring the software into the modern world (.pdf invoices that are bulk e-mailed, etc.). Recently I began chugging away at upgrading my legacy project, but discovered I can no longer convert my Development .mdb 2000 master to .mde's.
Of course, I have tried many twists to move from 2000 to the most recent Access version including what I think is my best shot - importing the FE Objects into a fresh new current version. Unfortunately, when I attempt this approach, receive an error message that I must seek "user permissions" to carry out this task. And the error msg link to MS leads to an announcement that the product is no longer supported. My programming laptops have been replaced four times since initial release of said software and today's programming machine was purchased in 2019 with MS Office Pro installed directly to the hard drive. And said project is a 32-bit model to preserve the .mdw security. When I try some other approaches, receive error messages that my development version is "encoded" and has to be "decoded". The program has a "start" file leading to a login window, and I see user "security" in "properties", but do not understand that speak. I own several fat Access development and programming books up to 2016, but cannot hit on a solution in their pages. I am not a computing "lifer" either - just enjoy database design for relaxation without the MS aggravation. Not too keen on a re-build from scratch either - at least 1,000 forms and reports alone in this baby. Thus hoping someone can point this lost soul in the right direction. Thanks!