Access treating Memo like a Text field

Hi,

I have an web app and I am using access 2002 and VB.net. I am using a
data adapter to fill a dataset.

I am retrieving product descriptions, some are long and i have used a
field of memo datatype to save them in.

The problem is sometimes I can only retrieve the first 255 characters
in a memo field and other times I can retrieve the full product
descriptions which can be over 640 charaters.

The problem is consistent, the same fields are always truncated to 255
characters and the others are always displayed in full.

Has anyone heard of this before? Any ideas on where I can look?

Thanks for any help.

Re: Access treating Memo like a Text field

Sling Blade,
Jet's maximum column width for a text column is 255 characters. Jet is the
database engine behind Access. So, Access' maximum column with for a text
column is 255 characters. There is no easy way around this.

"sling blade" wrote in message
news:9af6038a.0503210147.2b624d63@posting.google.com...
> Hi,
>
> I have an web app and I am using access 2002 and VB.net. I am using a
> data adapter to fill a dataset.
>
> I am retrieving product descriptions, some are long and i have used a
> field of memo datatype to save them in.
>
> The problem is sometimes I can only retrieve the first 255 characters
> in a memo field and other times I can retrieve the full product
> descriptions which can be over 640 charaters.
>
> The problem is consistent, the same fields are always truncated to 255
> characters and the others are always displayed in full.
>
> Has anyone heard of this before? Any ideas on where I can look?
>
> Thanks for any help.

Re: Access treating Memo like a Text field

Alan Webb wrote:
> Sling Blade,
> Jet's maximum column width for a text column is 255 characters. Jet
> is the database engine behind Access. So, Access' maximum column
> with for a text column is 255 characters. There is no easy way
> around this.

If he is storing them in a memo field that should not be an issue as it does
not have a 255 character limitation.

to OP:
Make sure your query is not using DISTINCT or doing any GROUP BY on the memo
field. That will cause it to truncxate at 255 characters.


--
I don't check the Email account attached
to this message. Send instead to...
RBrandt at Hunter dot com

Re: Access treating Memo like a Text field

Rick,
Memo fields are not text fields. They are an embedded object which contains
text. This allows Access to store more than 255 characters in a column but
as your post points out, also has limitations when you want to use a Memo
field in some SQL statements.

"Rick Brandt" wrote in message
news:3a8bqqF698f4fU1@individual.net...
> Alan Webb wrote:
>> Sling Blade,
>> Jet's maximum column width for a text column is 255 characters. Jet
>> is the database engine behind Access. So, Access' maximum column
>> with for a text column is 255 characters. There is no easy way
>> around this.
>
> If he is storing them in a memo field that should not be an issue as it
> does
> not have a 255 character limitation.
>
> to OP:
> Make sure your query is not using DISTINCT or doing any GROUP BY on the
> memo
> field. That will cause it to truncxate at 255 characters.
>
>
> --
> I don't check the Email account attached
> to this message. Send instead to...
> RBrandt at Hunter dot com
>
>

Re: Access treating Memo like a Text field

Alan Webb wrote:
> Rick,
> Memo fields are not text fields. They are an embedded object which
> contains text. This allows Access to store more than 255 characters
> in a column but as your post points out, also has limitations when
> you want to use a Memo field in some SQL statements.

But the OP indicated he was using a Memo field and then you commented that a
Text field is limited to 255 characters. I was merely pointing out that the
limitation on a Text field is not relevent since that is not what he is
using.


--
I don't check the Email account attached
to this message. Send instead to...
RBrandt at Hunter dot com

Re: Access treating Memo like a Text field

> Make sure your query is not using DISTINCT or doing any GROUP BY on
the memo
> field. That will cause it to truncxate at 255 characters.
>

It was the DISTINCT keyword which was doing it. Do you know why
DISTINCT would make it behave like that?

Thank you for your help. I would never have found that on my own.