Memo field only allowing 255 Characters

[PaulC]

Good day,

Wow, one more question - as you can see I am certainly no expert here. I
set-up a database and created a memo field purposely so that I could put more
than 255 characters in it. After using the database for sometime we've
discovered it's only storing the first 255 characters. I can not figure out
for the life of me why it's not storing the 65,000 characters it is supposed
to.

Any ideas?

 

[Rick Brandt]

Good day,

Wow, one more question - as you can see I am certainly no expert
here. I set-up a database and created a memo field purposely so that
I could put more than 255 characters in it. After using the database
for sometime we've discovered it's only storing the first 255
characters. I can not figure out for the life of me why it's not
storing the 65,000 characters it is supposed to.

Any ideas?

How do you know it is only storing 255 characters? In many cases the method
you are using to LOOK at the data is doing the truncating.

 

[John W. Vinson/MVP]

Good day,

Wow, one more question - as you can see I am certainly no expert here. I
set-up a database and created a memo field purposely so that I could put
more
than 255 characters in it. After using the database for sometime we've
discovered it's only storing the first 255 characters. I can not figure
out
for the life of me why it's not storing the 65,000 characters it is
supposed
to.

Any ideas?

This can happen if your Form is based on a query sorting by the memo field,
or the memo is in the Form's Filter or Order By properties. Make sure you're
not applying any sort or criteria to the memo field itself. One test would
be to open the table datasheet directly and try to enter longer text into
this field.

If this isn't clear please post the SQL view of the Query you're using to
enter data.

John W. Vinson/MVP

 

[PaulC]

Good day Rick,

Well that was a good idea - I tried it in my test database and it didn't
keep it in the form but it DID keep it in the database. I went to look at
the production database and tried it but for some reason it's not keeping it
in the form nor in the database. I even tried direct enter into the database
and it won't keep it - it lets me type forever but just doesn't save.

Very strange.

Paul

 

[PaulC]

Good day John,

I checked through "Code" and saw Filter and Order By fields were blank. I
am not sure how to post the sql view (when I go to code the sheet is blank).

It's not run from a query but is a form object.

When I first created the form I made the field a text field but upon further
development we changed it to a memo field... this was prior to entering
information into the database.

 

[PaulC]

Howdy,

I have a bit more information - I thought what I could do is just create a
new memo field and copy over the existing data from the field that's not
working into that. Long story short - I couldn't do it through Access and
ended up exporting it to Excel to try it from there. Believe it or not in
Excel the memo field has all of the information I entered - which is not
showing up in Access (in the form and in the database)! Holy cow.

Not sure if that will help anyone give me some more direction or not?

 

[PaulC]

Wow this is getting very weird.

Here's what I've found out - the difference between the test and production
version is that in production I had formatted the fieled using >. So when I
remove it I now can store more than 255 characters in the database.

I am still having problems seeing more than 255 characters through the form.

Paul

 

[PaulC]

Sorry for all the e-mails - one final update - there was a format tag in the
form with > in it to make everything capitals. I removed it and now I can
see all the data.

Thanks for all your help at least I figured it out. Do you folks think this
may be a bug then? The < and > format commands are just to format the text
should it really affect the size of the field?

Paul

 

[Rick Brandt]

Sorry for all the e-mails - one final update - there was a format tag
in the form with > in it to make everything capitals. I removed it
and now I can see all the data.

Thanks for all your help at least I figured it out. Do you folks
think this may be a bug then? The < and > format commands are just
to format the text should it really affect the size of the field?

Paul

As was first posted ANY formatting limits the output to 255 characters. We
might not like it, but MS would not describe it as a bug any more than they
would say it is a bug that a query is limited to 255 fields.