Use of memory

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When I have a text field defined with a field length of 200.
Then I suppose that Access will reserve this length in the memory even if I only use 10 positions.

Is this correct. If not could someone explane to me how Access usses the memory?

Thanks in advance.

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I was under the impression that Access lets you define the field length for reasons such as e.g. 50 characters fits in a window envelope in a mailmerge, so the field can’t be more that 50 characters long. Where memory is concerned, I had always assumed that Access assigned memory as you typed, and wrote the information to hard disk when you clicked the save record button. I may be wrong, as I do not know this for a fact. Interesting question though and I hope you get a definite answer.

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When you say “memory”, do you mean disk space?

I’m not quite sure of the specifics, but I believe Access stores a value of 10 characters and 190 blank spaces in your case of a 200 character text field. This is why data type and field length are very important to optimizing a database.

HTH

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I thought that Access only stored the actual number of characters in the text field. The actual length of the field is stored as a 1-byte overhead. So the maximum length is an indicator only.

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