Re: Increase field size

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onedaywhen wrote:
Rick Brandt wrote:
In Access
2000 and later they APPEAR to be allowed but in reality only the
first 255 characters are used in all of those situations. In my
opinion that means the restrictions still apply.

If you think "You cannot index it" still applies and "only the first
255 characters are used" then why do the following produce no errors
in creation and usage?

CREATE TABLE Test1 (
memo_col MEMO NOT NULL
UNIQUE)
;
CREATE INDEX idx__test ON Test1 (memo_col)
;
INSERT INTO Test1 (memo_col) VALUES
('1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789A')

;
INSERT INTO Test1 (memo_col) VALUES
('1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789B')

;

No biggie, I just think you made a misstatement based on Access 97
behaviour.

From Access 2003 help...
**********************
You can sort or group on a Text field or a Memo field, but Access only uses
the first 255 characters when you sort or group on a Memo field.
**********************

In a test table I created a unique index on a memo field and then entered
two records with 255 repitions of the character "X". The second record was
not allowed even if I added additional characters after the 255th so clearly
the index in only using those positions.

I will concede that "cannot" was perhaps over-stated, but their are
"limitations" compared to regular text fields.

--
Rick Brandt, Microsoft Access MVP
Email (as appropriate) to...
RBrandt at Hunter dot com


.

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