I cannot enter any more text in memo field

[Susan]

I have a dB in Acess 2007. We have a "Comments" memo field where we keep
lenghty notes on cases. One of the users cannot enter any more notes in this
field. The memo field is set to plain text. I copied the text into a word
document to double check the size -- and it's barely 100k with 52K +
characters (10k+ words) so I can't imagine the memo field limit has been
reached. I read through the other posts and didn't find anything that
specifically addressed my question. I did double check the properties -- the
field is not locked and is enabled.

Any suggestions? Tks Susan

 

[Golfinray]

A memo field can hold 65,535 characters, and that is including spaces and
puctuation. There is a built in function that will compress that for you.

 

[Susan]

Thank you for the quick reply -- I do recall seeing something about
compression in the help files. How much will that really gain?

Seems rather odd to have a function that will hold 2 gig in only 65,535
characters doesn't it? Of course -- I'm probably not understanding the whole
thing correctly!

I've been attacking this from another angle by converting the existing memo
fields to docx's and attaching them to the form. There is no way a lawyer
could be restricted to 65,535!!! <grin>

Thanks again Golfinray

 

[Gina Whipp]

Susan,

It's not the FUNCTION that holds 2 gig but the database size itself that is
restricted to 2 gig in size unless of course you upgrade to let's say an SQL
Server back-end. So, if you allowed 1 memo field to hold 2 gig then you
would only have 1 memo field in the entire database.

As you say, restricting a lawyer to 65,535 characters is impossible your
solution of 'attaching' documents is a far better way to handle the
situation. You could then create hyperlinks to such documents so they could
still be opened from the database.

 

[Bob Quintal]

Thank you for the quick reply -- I do recall seeing something
about compression in the help files. How much will that really
gain?

Seems rather odd to have a function that will hold 2 gig in only
65,535 characters doesn't it? Of course -- I'm probably not
understanding the whole thing correctly!

The 64K limit on memo fields applies when using the textbox control
on a form or report.not to what can be placed in a memo field by
code or object embedding.

I've been attacking this from another angle by converting the
existing memo fields to docx's and attaching them to the form.
There is no way a lawyer could be restricted to 65,535!!! <grin>

Another way is to build a table with 3 fields: a reference to the
main table's key (maybe CaseNumber if a legal db), the date and time
of the entry, and the memo field.

This new table would be displayed as a subform on the main form.

Instead of adding to the memo field, a new record would get added to
this sub table. The limit is then the 2 Gig of the total databsae
size.