Is there an Access size limit?

[Bev Kaufman]

I am about to take on a project with Access 2003. I have not seen the data
yet, but I am told that the current program size is between 10 and 15 meg,
and that there are 7000 master records. Furthermore, the database had grown
rather quickly from an initial 1000 records to 7000.

Is there a point at which an Access 2003 database becomes too large to be
stable or manageable?

 

[Ken Snell]

Maximum size for ACCESS .mdb file is 2 GB. When you hit that limit, the file
will corrupt and be unusable. The file size can and usually does grow while
you work in it, so you don't want to get close to this limit while using the
file.

In general, if your file is near 1.5 GB, you should be exploring moving to a
larger database system, such as SQL Server. Below that, you should be fine.

 

[Bev Kaufman]

Is the size limit any different if we go to Access 2007?

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

No.

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Bev

In addition to Ken's and Doug's responses, be aware that you can use Access
as a front-end to back-end datasets that are NOT stored in Access. That 2
Gb limit pertains to an Access/JET/accdb back-end.

(and if your db is currently under 20 Mb, you probably could stuff 50 times
that much in before considering migrating to a more robust back-end like
SQL-Server, ...)

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

I am about to take on a project with Access 2003. I have not seen the data
yet, but I am told that the current program size is between 10 and 15 meg,
and that there are 7000 master records. Furthermore, the database had grown
rather quickly from an initial 1000 records to 7000.

Is there a point at which an Access 2003 database becomes too large to be
stable or manageable?

I have clients with 800K records in some tables working reasonably
well.

Tony

 

[Steve Sinclair]

I am about to take on a project with Access 2003. I have not seen the
data
yet, but I am told that the current program size is between 10 and 15 meg,
and that there are 7000 master records. Furthermore, the database had
grown
rather quickly from an initial 1000 records to 7000.

Is there a point at which an Access 2003 database becomes too large to be
stable or manageable?

I once created a 7GB database in Access 2003. This was done by putting the
larger tables into their own .mdb files and linking to them from the main
database. One of the tables had to be split into two and I created a union
query to select from them as a single table. Fortunately the larger tables
were read only.

Steve

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

I once created a 7GB database in Access 2003. This was done by putting the
larger tables into their own .mdb files and linking to them from the main
database. One of the tables had to be split into two and I created a union
query to select from them as a single table. Fortunately the larger tables
were read only.

And, of course, the tables in the other MDBs had no relational
integrity.

Tony

 

[david]

That is, the tables in the other MDBs had no

Declarative Referential Integrity,

Fortunately the larger tables were read only.

(david)