Error message "record is too large"

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mary Jo
  • Start date Start date
M

Mary Jo

While using Microsoft Access 2000 to edit some fields in
one of my tables, I received the error message "record is
too large"

I'm not at the maximum size. However, I've been doing
lots of additions and deletions. So if I run the compact
and repair database command, should that "reset" my table
so that I can continue?

This leads to a more general question on when and how
often should one compact and repair the database?

Thanks for your help,
Mary Jo
 
There is a limit as to how many characters can be stored in a single row in
an Access table (4000 bytes, if memory serves).

Access allows you to create tables that conceivably exceed that limit. For
example, since Access only uses as much space as is required for text
fields, it doesn't care if you define 20 fields of 255 character each,
despite the fact that 20*255 would exceed 4000 bytes.

Is it possible that you ARE trying to insert a row that's too big?
 
So if I run documenter on the table and sum the field
size, would that tell me the potential record size which
ideally should be under 4000?

Thanks,
Mary Jo
 
Actually, there's no problem with having the potential record size exceed
4000: problems only occur when you actually exceed that amount.

Numeric fields have a fixed size, so there's nothing you can do about them.
It doesn't matter whether you store 0 or 2,147,483,647 in a Long Integer
field: it's going to take 4 bytes.

It's only the Text fields that are variable in size. What you may need to do
is keep track of the total number of characters they're trying to enter in
all of your text fields, and you can tell them they've exceeded the
allowable limit. Either that, or if you have a large amount of text to add
to a record, consider using a Memo field (memo fields are stored separately
than the rest of the record, and only add 10 bytes to the record size)
 
Back
Top