Hi Beverley,

There's a third, better, reason for the programmer to advise against
editing the data files outside the program. In a well-designed Access
database, there are validation rules and relationships between tables
which between them maintain the integrity of the data (e.g. you can't
have an Order that isn't associated with a Customer), and these are
built into the .mdb file. DBF files don't have any corresponding
built-in safeguards: they have to be written into the program code and
don't come into the picture when you open a .dbf file from a different
program such as Access. So there is a very real danger of creating
inconsistencies in the data that could make the program fail.

The best approach would be to temporarily install the program and its
data files on another computer and try editing the .dbf files. If this
fixes the errors you know about, and thorough testing doesn't find any
new problems, it's probably safe; but if anything went wrong you will
still have the original installation.

--
John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

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