Mircosoft Office Document Imagaing File Locking Visual Basic 2005?

My program splits a mulitpage tiff file (batch of purchase orders from Sage MMS)into separate files by doing OCR and using the MODI functions.My code has three main loops. 1st loop goes through each of the pages and splits the tiff into separate tiff files based on order number and stores them in a directory. for each order i also create an array of information by doing OCR from the tiff ie. order number, customer etc etc. 2nd loop goes through the array. for each order number in the array checks to see if there is another tiff file existing in another directory. This could be a separate sheet which needs to be attached to the main purchase order and comes from a document scanner in another office.If there is an additional file i merge that tiff file with the current tiff file. 3rd loop goes through the array once more and uses the microsoft faxcomexlib to faxed the files using my server 2003 fax serverthe 3 loops work perfect and very fast and i can send the faxes no problem.

I also add all the array information into an access database so historical purposes.My problem:In the first loop i need to check that the fax has not already been sent. (users can reprint orders so need to be careful that fax isnt sent more than once) I do this by getting the order number and querying the database. If the order does not exist then i can proceed else i prompt the user to refax yes or no.i have put the database connection and sql in a function which returns true or false. however when i add the function to my main loops i get a file lock on the current order. If i remove the function my code works perfect.

Dim conn As New OdbcConnection(constr)
Dim cmdselect As New OdbcCommand
' Get status from current job

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