Memo Field: DAO

[Randomblink]

In the Help files I came across this:

Memo
Lengthy text or combinations of text and numbers.
Up to 65,535 characters. (If the Memo field is manipulated through DAO and only text and numbers [not binary data] will be stored in it, then the size of the Memo field is limited by the size of the database.)

So, I have string with 96k characters in it.
I NEED to store this IN a Memo Field (unless someone can tell me what other kind of field would hold this?).

How would I do that using DAO?
It says Manipulated through DAO?
I THOUGHT that would mean just a simple DAO.Recordset OPEN rst!FieldName = HUGESTRING or something like that...

Confused? Help if you can?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

There is a difference between a displayed Memo field and one that is manipulated only behind the scenes. The difference is that if it has to participate in the visible part of a form, report, query, or table, it is then limited to 65K bytes. If it is NEVER displayed, you can get it longer.

But this is a potential problem in some ways. It might be a pain in the toches, but is there a chance you might wish to keep the field in a separate file and only hold the reference to that file in your database? Mucking about with really humongous data fields is, indeed, possible but very awkward.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Additional comments:

Memo fields cannot participate in a key.

Memo fields can take a long time to manipulate because to Access, they are one big field. You MUST use things like InStr$, Right$, Left$, Mid$ to extract data, which means some pretty ugly string manipulation routines.

It is your app, so I won't say you cannot do this, but it is perhaps unwise to take this approach. Mostly based on the idea that you are circumventing the features of Access that are supposed to make it easier to use. You are only one step away from writing pure VB code to manipulate multi-Kbyte strings. Hope you don't have too many of those at one time.

 

[Randomblink]

Heya...

Hey DocMan...

Yeah, actually I am opening up binary files and grabbing strings and placing them inside fields for temp storage. I am trying to write a data-app that will grab data from specific files and adjust and manipulate the data through forms, then plop it all back up into the files... The Memo field is for data that doesn't need to be edited RIGHT NOW, but I need to come up with a way to adjust them... The Memo field will hold descriptions, and the first description I test is of course 95k large... ugh! At least I learned the restrictions now...

So most of the manipulation is done on a VB level anyway... yeah!

Anyway, thanks to both...
It looks like I need to dump this crap into an open file just to double check it for authenticity, then I can just relax and KNOW it is alright...

Thanks...