>will this work? if so, how? i can't get my program to recognize an access 7.0 database. we have to use the 16-bit system for now (clients are slow to upgrade)

No straight 'yes/no' answer because when VB4 was released Access 7 was't ready yet. There is a hope that backward compatibility was in mind when they (MS) were preparing Office 7. I think you'll have to try all possibilities (there are few) of accessing the data: Snapshot, Table, whatever else is there.