Report that requires more than 255 data fields

[PZStraube]

Hello,

Rookie post.

I am under the impression that when creating a report in Access 2003,
you can use only one "record source" (query or table) to provide data
(acknowledging that several tables or queries may may be used to create
the final record source) and that 255 data fields are the maximum you
can access. Is that right?

I have a detailed spreadsheet in Excel that I would like to move to
Access (which is where the raw data comes from anyway). It has 20 rows
of roughly 120 datafields - thus, giving a total number of roughly 2,400
datafields. This is no problem in Excel, of course, but I think I'm
beyond the limit in Access 2003.

Thanks for any comments you may have!

 

[Rick B]

The total number of (fields x records) does not matter.

You can print a report with 5,000 records (or much more) if you want. There
is no limit to the number of records to include in a report. There might be
a limit to the number of controls you can place on the report for any given
record (and headers and footers). Go to help and type "specification" for
details.

Rick B

 

[Sprinks]

If you import the data as it exists, you will get 20 records into a table of
120 fields, which Access can handle, since the limit is 255 fields per table.
However, assuming you can transpose the data, you can import 120 records
into a table of 20 fields.

HTH
Sprinks

 

[John Vinson]

Hello,

Rookie post.

I am under the impression that when creating a report in Access 2003,
you can use only one "record source" (query or table) to provide data
(acknowledging that several tables or queries may may be used to create
the final record source) and that 255 data fields are the maximum you
can access. Is that right?

No, it emphatically is NOT.

You can put 255 fields on a Report... then 255 more fields on a
Subreport... then 255 more fields on another Subreport, and so on and
so on. But that's really not the issue.

I have a detailed spreadsheet in Excel that I would like to move to
Access (which is where the raw data comes from anyway). It has 20 rows
of roughly 120 datafields - thus, giving a total number of roughly 2,400
datafields. This is no problem in Excel, of course, but I think I'm
beyond the limit in Access 2003.

I have to assume that many, many of these fields are repeating fields,
and that each of these 2400 field "records" actually contain several
one-to-many relationships. In a relational database, "fields are
expensive, records are cheap" - you should really consider importing
this wide-flat structure into a tall-thin normalized set of tables. It
then becomes very easy to display the data.

At the VERY worst, if you have 20 rows of 120 fields each - why not
have 20 rows of 120 fields each in your table? Are the rows all of
different structure - not just different content, but different KINDS
of data in each field?

John W. Vinson[MVP]