Problem edit/update within a transaction

Can't believe I am asking this...
Company I am working for have an old system written in Access 97 VBA (DAO).
In it they start a transaction, modify some fields and end the transaction, we have within this transaction now also directly modified some of the fields (using edit and update) and when run it gets 3003 or 3246 transaction errors.
Does anyone know why we would get these errors (my assumption is you cannot have a transaction open and edit the database at the same time)?
We have a solution (move the edit/update to after the transaction has finished) which is tested and works, but my boss will not let me use it as she considers it a workaround and would prefer to know what the actual problem is.
I have not used DAO in a long time and rarely use transactions, but it is a case of any database activity within the begintrans and commit or rollback is considered part of the transaction?

Thanks,
Brian.

To my knowledge,Access can't use Trans-act SQL (don't know about 2002). You have to write every statemetn and execute then individually. Use VBA to execute each statement in turn using DAO and use the code to catch errors and backout andy transaction you want to. It won't be easy, (as you have to keep track fo what you have done to back them out) but it is possible (I do it).

S-