Recordset is not updateable -- where is help on MS Access 365?

Rob Curtis 20

For years I have just used Access 2007 on my laptop, though I have Office 365. As the disc wouldn't work on my Win11 PC, and the laptop has a problem, I finally decided to use the later access, and opened a 2007 database. I updated a number of records in a table and then I went to a query and found that now,it says the recordset is not updateable. I has always been so on the laptop for decades.

When I first opened the 365 Access, it said something about needing to be the administrator, but it seemed to make no difference till I went to change records in the query. I am the sole user of this personal computer and thus the administrator, so if that is why and it doesn't know that, what do I do.

Rob Curtis 20 Reputation points

2026-07-12T05:56:56.03+00:00

I looked and it says I am the adminstrator. No wonder I didn't want to update, as I remember not liking 2007 Access compared to the one I learned on. STUCK.

8 answers

Ken Sheridan 3,581 Reputation points

2026-07-15T13:37:23.6+00:00

In addition to designating a primary key for the animals 3 table and referencing this by a foreign key column in Slides 1, I would recommend that the relationship between the two tables then be enforced by selecting 'Enforce referential integrity' in the edit relationship dialogue. If Access does not allow you to do this, it would indicate that there is at least one row in Slides 1 without a match in animals 3.

Not directly connected to your current issue, but I would point out that Slides 1 is not normalized to Third Normal Form by virtue of the inclusion of City, State/Province, and Country columns. This leaves the table open to the risk of update anomalies. The table should include a numeric CityID foreign key column referencing the autonumber. primary key of a Cities table. City names cannot be used as a key as these can legitimately be duplicated. The Cities table should then include a foreign key referencing the primary key of a States_Provinces table, which should include a foreign key referencing the primary key of a Countries table.

You might like to take a look at DatabaseBasics.zip in my Dropbox public databases folder at:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/0scigd3r48hx5xrev2jrf/AB0-GMdTgMAO5O1cGdr3QW0?rlkey=ib6bs6g9jqcrywwzivur3265t&dl=0

This little demo file illustrates, amongst other things, such a correctly normalized set of tables. The option for 'Inserting data via a form/subforms' opens a form in which data can be inserted using correlated combo boxes, by selecting a country, then a region and then a city, with option at each level of the hierarchy to insert a new value not currently represented in the database.

Decomposing the table into s et of predefined related tables can be done by means of a set of 'append' queries. The DemposerDemo.zip file in the same Dropbox folder illustrates this, using non-normalized data imported from Excel.
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Rob Curtis 20 Reputation points

2026-07-15T14:04:03.52+00:00

I tried to make species a primary key in animals and it said there can be no blank entries, When I first put names into the description field in Adobe Bridge, I often put something basic , like 'brown beetle' and no species till I get some further ID. So the table has blanks as I use it when I get IDs to add or correct the species field. It shows me which records do not have IDs that are in the animals table. There are about 3000 such records awaiting updates, while using slides table would mean searching through a couple hundred thousand. In fact a whole lot of general names such as hundreds of "Lepidoptera" are not in the animals table as species, as I only add those with at least genus. The whole purpose of the table is to show those with incomplete species names. Maybe that is why when I just created a new query, looking at a screen shot of this one's design view and duplicating, running the query produced zero records. Unbelievable what a setback this is, as the 2007 Access ran fine for decades. Now I updated a lot of species IDs, thinking how much better it is having the Access on the same computer as all the images, and realize that if I went back to Access 2007 on the laptop, I'd have to seek out all those IDs again.

Rob Curtis 0 Reputation points

2026-07-20T15:11:13.0233333+00:00

So went to the laptop where the database was originally in Access 2007. I didn't want to open the latest in Access 365, in case it made that unusable for 2007. I opened an earlier save. I had chosen run as adminstrator, and opened and I got the same warning that active content is blocked, and then when I went to the same query, it was not updateable.
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Richard Rost 315 Reputation points MVP

2026-07-19T15:34:23.8866667+00:00
I wouldn't assume this is an Access 365 issue. The rules that determine whether a query is updateable really haven't changed much over the years.

Since you mentioned you can still edit the table directly, but not through the query, that tells me the database itself probably isn't read-only. I'd be looking at the query definition or the environment instead.

A few things I'd check:
- Is the database in a Trusted Location?
- Did the ACCDB come from another computer and get blocked by Windows?
- Does every table involved have a primary key?
- Did the query accidentally get changed to use DISTINCT, GROUP BY, UNION, aggregate functions, or another feature that makes it non-updateable?
I'd also make a copy of the database and run Compact and Repair. Moving an older ACCDB to a newer version of Access can sometimes expose minor corruption that older versions tolerated.

Finally, if you can post the SQL for the query, someone here can probably spot the cause pretty quickly. It's very unusual for a query that has been updateable for years to suddenly stop being updateable just because you installed a newer version of Access.

LLAP/RR
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Rob Curtis 0 Reputation points

2026-07-20T01:14:20.7433333+00:00

I think that the problem may have been related to opening on my Pc after putting on flash drive from my laptop. At first it was indicated not a trusted location (even though I am the sole user of both) and I had to Godaddy and sign in and such and now I don't get the error messages signing in though the query is still not updateable. I was suggested to make table a primary key, so I built a duplicatae query with that as a primary key and ran and it produced zero records. That is because the purpose of the query is to find records that have not been completed with a good species or genus name. When I get a valid ID I add that in the species category that is now not updateable. Since none of the records have a species that is in the animal category, with that as a primary key, it found nothing. I really don't understand why something that was so reliable for almost 2 decades and worked so well now has to have all these special suggested requirements. Not my idea of progress. I did run compact and repair but no difference.
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Rob Curtis 0 Reputation points

2026-09-03T09:42:00.71+00:00

So this query was set up to see which animals did not have IDs in the database. I use a 1 in the kingdom field to indicate an animal. I use a 2 to indicate plants. the query was set up with criteria in that as 1 or empty, meaning that if it had a blank field, it would find those records also.

I decided to look for plants without species names and changed the kingdom filed to 2, and much to my surprise, I was able to update records. So I went back to look for animals instead and changed the field to just 1, and it became updateable, working like it should. So though it worked for years with the earlier Access, 365 did not like.
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Recordset is not updateable -- where is help on MS Access 365?

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