Text field size (1 Viewer)

[dsigner]

MS documentation states that space is not reserved for unused characters in a text field. Does this mean that there is no storage penaly for having a text field 255 as opposed to 80.

On a more general note are there any tools to help calculate the size of a table?

 

[Dennisk]

A text column will only store the characters and does not pad out the column so If your maximum length is 20 and you only enter 1 character then only one character is stored not one character and 19 spaces.

 

[Moniker]

Dennis is correct in that text field sizes are more limits rather than anything else in Access. You limit to X characters if you want a maximum of X characters. Otherwise, extra spaces are not stored.

As for the size of the table, do you mean in kilobytes or something? The size of an individual object in Access doesn't really matter, and it's arbitrary since the contents can change and it stores superfluous information beyond the data you see (the data type, special formatting, input masks, etc.).

 

[Dennisk]

The size of a table will vary because of what we have discussed in this post however you could calculate the max and min size of each row then find how many fit on a page (2k I think) then devide that into the number of rows and that will show the number of 2k pages

 

[RoyVidar]

True that ordinary text fields don't pad, but

1 - if you like, you can also create fixed width text fields, see for instance http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=126837, which does pad
2 - not that I'm 100% sure, but I think that the defined size is what's used when fetching the information, which might make a difference on slow networks. I don't have the possibility to do any reliable tests at the moment.