Character count in field

[J33pgirl]

I am considering creating a db for some information I, and my
co-workers, use in the course of our work. The problem I am running
into is the field I'm trying to put the data into is limited to 255
characters. I need to be able to enter upwards of 2500 characters
(including spaces) for some pieces of information, some will be more
some less. Does anyone know of a way that I can do this in MS Access? I
kind of think that this is not possible which would mean that I have to
come up with another plan.

Thanks

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Use a Memo field, rather than a Text field.

 

[J33pgirl]

OMG... I'm so stupid. That never even occurred to me. I tested it out
right now... it works.. took all the info I needed for that one entry
and still has room for more.

I don't suppose anyone knows off hand how many characters a memo field
can hold? I'm sure I can find that in the help files tho.

Thanks.. I can't believe I never even considered that. This is going to
make my job so much easier!!

 

[J33pgirl]

OK.. Nevermind.. I looked it up in the help files.. a memo field can
take approximately 65,000 characters... I think that about covers
anything I could want to store there!

OH.. I'm so excited about this.. I get to follow through with this
awesome Idea.. and it might get me some major brownie points at work!
Thanks again!

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

How big it can be depends on where you look. <g>

In one place in the Help file, it says "A Memo field can store up to 64,000
characters." In another place, it states "because the size of a Long Binary
or Memo field can exceed 64K, you should assign the value returned by
FieldSize to a variable large enough to store a Long variable." [sic]

Do recognize that there are some downsides to Memo fields. You cannot index
them, nor sort on them.