"Since I call the update routine from the main menu of the exe"

It needs to happen before you open any of the tables in the appliation. There are several ways around this. The simplest fixes is right at the very begining of the app have messagebox come up that says "update tables?", and if they answer yes it runs the update routine. It's a bit of a pain in the neck because the user has to click 'no' everytime they run the app, even before they log in. Another simple fix is at the very start of your app, look at a little one charter text-file, if it's a 'Y', run the update, if it's a 'N', then don't...all you gotta do is change the one character. There is also a way to have it determine on it's own if this needs to be done, but I've quit doing that because it takes to long to fireup the app.