Insufficient Memory???

[ChuckL]

I have a address database of 300,000 records. The database came from a mainframe that made every field 255 characters long. Then I try to make a field smaller in the design screen, I get an error message that there is insufficient memory or disk space. My computer is a duel 2.66GHZ Pentium with 4 Gigs of Ram and 200GB of hard drive. Is this task too much for Access 2002? I can't imagine my computer is too slow.

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

What Access is actually doing being the scenes when you change a field size
is creating a new field of the new size, copying the existing values into
that new field, then deleting the old field. With large tables, often you do
run out of memory.

However, be aware that there's no reason to do this. Even if none of your
addresses use 255 characters, they aren't taking up any additional space:
Access only uses as many bytes for each record as are required to store the
data.

--
Doug Steele, Microsoft Access MVP

(No private e-mails, please)

I have a address database of 300,000 records. The database came from a

mainframe that made every field 255 characters long. Then I try to make a
field smaller in the design screen, I get an error message that there is
insufficient memory or disk space. My computer is a duel 2.66GHZ Pentium
with 4 Gigs of Ram and 200GB of hard drive. Is this task too much for Access
2002? I can't imagine my computer is too slow.