Text Data Type - Space Used

[Rabbit]

"Microsoft Access does not reserve space for unused portions of a text field."

That's what the help files say, yet I noticed that leaving the field blank or actually having text in it doesn't change the size. But increasing the field size increases the size. I compacted each time.

Or does unused portion simply refer to the field size?

[maxamis4]

If you have a record set, and any one part of that record has data in it, all the null values will become reserved and will take up space. The reason for this is that the database is aware that the blank could potentially be additional information.

"Microsoft Access does not reserve space for unused portions of a text field."

That's what the help files say, yet I noticed that leaving the field blank or actually having text in it doesn't change the size. But increasing the field size increases the size. I compacted each time.

Or does unused portion simply refer to the field size?

[NeoPa]

"Microsoft Access does not reserve space for unused portions of a text field."

That's what the help files say, yet I noticed that leaving the field blank or actually having text in it doesn't change the size. But increasing the field size increases the size. I compacted each time.

Or does unused portion simply refer to the field size?

What happens if you set up a table with 10,000 records (A single text field of 50 chars) and you set each record to the string "A".
Next, update each record to a 49 char string.

If, after compacting, each of these databases are of exactly the same size, then you know that MS are balking tollocks.