Expansion of Database Size by Linked Images

[mdb-pup]

Hello,

Would anyone suggest to me why when I inserted jpgs in a OLE Object Data
type column, linked, it still disproportionately expanded the size of the mdb?

Even one inserted linked jpg increased the size from roughly 500 kb to 19
mb. I expect the answer is probably a simple one.

I even did a compact and repair afterwards to see if that would address it
but the size remained the same. Thanks for your any assistance with this.

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

The normal advice is not to store images in the database. Store them
external to the database, and strictly store the path in the database.

Fellow MVP Larry Linson often posts the following standard reply on this
topic:

"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"