Efficient storage of images in Access

[every1luvsVB via AccessMonster.com]

Hello Access people!

I have an OLE control on my form that is used to store images in the database.
I have realised that after storing a few images, the size of the MDB file
grows quite substantially. Obviously to store images against hundreds of
records is unfeasible.

Is there a best practice solution to storing images in Access? Can you store
the images as seperate files in a separate Windows folder, then store a path
string and file name (entered via text boxes) of the location and filenames
of these images and somehow 'load' the image at runtime into an OLE control
property for each current record you are viewing at any given time? I would
assume that if this was possible the database would not increase that much in
size as the actual images are no longer being stored within this database?

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Douglas J Steele]

The sample imaging databases at http://accdevel.tripod.com illustrate three
approaches to handling images in Access, and the download includes an
article discussing considerations in choosing an approach. Two of the
approaches do not use OLE Objects and, thus, avoid the database bloat, and
some other problems, associated with images in OLE Objects.

If you are printing the images in reports, to avoid memory leakage, you
should also see MVP Stephen Lebans' http://www.lebans.com/printfailures.htm.
PrintFailure.zip is an Access97 MDB containing a report that fails during
the Access formatting process prior to being spooled to the Printer Driver.
This MDB also contains code showing how to convert the contents of the Image
control to a Bitmap file prior to printing. This helps alleviate the "Out of
Memory" error that can popup when printing image intensive reports.

If you've already starting storing images in your database, and you'd like
to export them all, see:
http://www.lebans.com/oletodisk.htm

 

[every1luvsVB via AccessMonster.com]

Douglas thankyou for the information.

It's been a great help.