You can't go backwards. I experienced what you describe, just by opening the db, it made some internal change that then made it incompatible with 2013. You always have to do all your development using the oldest version of Access that will be used to run
the database, so in your case 2013. Then you deploy a copy to 2016, but never allow them to touch the master dev copy of the database. When this does occur, you need to create a new blank 2013 db and try to import everything back. It that doesn't work there's
always the SaveAsText/LoadFromText approach.
Daniel Pineault, 2010-2017 Microsoft MVP
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