how do i increase form cell lenth from 50 to 200 plus characters

[MTS]

I am trying to find out how to increase my form cells from 50 characters to
200 plus. I want to be able in input data into the form, but I am limited to.
I am using Access 2003.

 

[Jeanette Cunningham]

MTS,
look for the table that the form is based on.
Open that table in design view, find the fields that need extra length.
For each of those fields change the field length to a higher number.
The maximum size for a text field is 255.
If you have too many text fields with 255 characters in them,
(that means if users input 255 characters in too many textboxes in the form)
all in the same record, you will run into the limit for a single record.


Jeanette Cunningham

 

[John W. Vinson]

I am trying to find out how to increase my form cells from 50 characters to
200 plus. I want to be able in input data into the form, but I am limited to.
I am using Access 2003.

You are not inputting data into a Form.

You are using a Form *as a tool* to input data into a Table. Data exists in
tables, and only in tables; forms are just windows.

Open the Table upon which the form is based in design view and select this
field. Change its size to 255 bytes (the maximum size of a Text datatype) if
that's adequate for you. If you need more (up to a billion bytes,
theoretically) change the datatype from Text to Memo.

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

I wasn't aware that there was a "limit" for a single record. Exactly what
is
that limit?

I can never remember whether it's 2000 or 4000 bytes.

Easy enough to write a test to determine, though. Create a table with, say,
20 fields defined as Text(255).

Start writing records to the table, adding a character for each record,
until you can't write anymore.

 

[John W. Vinson]

I wasn't aware that there was a "limit" for a single record. Exactly what is
that limit?

From Help... Specifications:

Number of characters in a record (excluding Memo and OLE Object fields) when
the UnicodeCompression property of the fields is set to Yes: 4,000

Interesting that it's not 4095 or 4096 or some other power of two!

It's a rather nasty limitation, because you can easily create a table with
multiple text fields; it will work fine initially, and you can go for months
until someone with a verbose streak actually USES all 25 of the 255-byte text
fields.