Background: I am an amateur naturalist and active fieldworker.  I have R3, R2002 and R6 (latest version, 6.13.3.182) installed on my PC.  I use R3 to store and report on my records, and I input to it as my database of choice.  I use R2002 and R6 as a means of periodically transferring data to national recording schemes, LBRCs and individual users of those databases, in preference to using other means of transfer such as spreadsheets.  My database comprises 105k records (ie taxon occurrences) spread across a range of aquatic invertebrate groups.

This week, for the first time, I attempted to export two different datasets from my copy of R6 to two different users of R6 (previously, recipients have been users of R2002 or R3, so I had used those databases instead).  Prior to transfer, I did a dummy run with each dataset, in turn, into an empty nbndata.mdb file, restored from backup, in order to satisfy myself that all was in order regarding the data being sent.  I exported both datasets as NBN Access database zip files. In both cases I was informed during import that there were no duplicate or invalid items, yet on completion of the import process I was notified that 40% of the imported items had been rejected.  I repeated the operation again with each dataset, ie four transfer attempts, but the outcome was the same each time.  Obviously, I did not send the export files to the intended recipients.   

Instead, I did a dummy run with the same two datasets that I also held on my R2002.  (Initially I had exported the data as two separate surveys from R3 to R2002, and then exported them on to R6.  I encountered no problems with these transfers and the numbers of locations/ species observations/ people etc in each database were all as I expected them to be.)  This time the import process to R6 proceeded without any problems.  So, I sent the datasets as R2002 export files to the respective recipients, and both reported subsequently that the data had transferred successfully into their R6 databases.

Have any other R6 users encountered similar problems?  If so, transferring your data via R2002, if that is an option open to you (which I suspect it isn’t for most users) is an interim solution until the bug is fixed.

Bob Merritt