A family of Microsoft relational database management systems designed for ease of use.
Right, so whoever is following this thread and I hope that Microsoft certainly is, I think I have figured out with which systems this problem is occurring. I did a fresh install in another computer. This time I chose default office installation instead of 64 bit Office installation. And Voila - the same file works perfectly. Only thing is in all this hassle, my reports got corrupted and could not document those when using the documenter afterwards. So have deleted them. However with or without the reports the compact and repair worked perfectly. Someone had suggested, or I had read somewhere that one must compact the database while keeping the file closed so that's what I did. It was not different from what I was doing earlier in the other machine. So this is a big shoutout to Grover Park George who actually thought of this possibility and mentioned it in his reply. Thanks so much. For the time being till Microsoft fixes this for 64 bit systems, - all those having this problem just uninstall your office 365 and when doing a fresh install, use the default installation. DO NOT use the 64 bit installation. Since I did both in different machines I am confident that it is the 64 bit version that is causing the problem. Just install the default version and your problem will be sorted. Thanks to all who helped. And please keep this thread alive with your inputs and updates as this is a way to circumvent the problem. Microsoft still needs to come up with a fix. Thanks guys. Stay safe.
Ripal