Open it in any of these three programs, and accept Access' offer to
convert it to Access 2000 format. All three of 2000, 2002 and 2003 use
2000 format as the default.

The A97 database will already be usable by any of the later versions,
but you won't be able to make any form, report or other design changes
without converting it.

                 John W. Vinson[MVP]    

You can easily convert a basic database from Access 97 to Access 2003. You
must first have the new version of Access. Then you must open the Access 97
database from the new version. It will prompt you to convert it. My
suggestion is to change the name of the Access file that you are creating
instead of overwriting the previous Access 97 file. That way you can
compare behavior.

If the Access 97 database is more complicated (it has modules, forms, and
macros), then a bit more work may be involved. You will have to change the
Data access method from DAO 2.5 to DAO 3.6.
Tim