Hi Janet As Peter has said in his email below, having all those fields in one table is a sign there is a problem with normalisation. I won't be surprised to hear that there is only a single table in the database. There is need to break down the table into many tables which are related on some fields. Your predecessor got it all wrong by creating a table for every event. Basically personal details would be in one table, types of events in a second table and the events themselves in a third table containing one field relating to personal details and one field relating to the type of event (these are called foreign keys). Perhaps the URLs suggested by Peter can be of some help. After reading normalisation if you have any question you can post it here and we should be able to assist you.
Regards Liveson ----- Original Message ----- From: Peter Fairchild To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, 17 November, 2007 00:52 Subject: Re: [ms_access] How many fields Dear Janet, Any table with that many fields defined is too wide and needs to be broken down a bit. Below is a small table with the characteristics of an Access database: *Table specifications* *Attribute * *Maximum* Number of characters in a table name 64 Number of characters in a field name 64 Number of fields in a table 255 from: http://www.databasezone.com/techdocs/acclimit.html Mike Chapple has an excellent article about normalization of databases that might help you get started reorganizing your database. http://databases.about.com/od/specificproducts/a/normalization.htm Kind regards, Peter -- Peter T. Fairchild Consultant en Informatique [EMAIL PROTECTED] +41-(0)79-715-9155 Portable +41-(0)21-800-4044 Office "Form and Function are one" Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 - 1959 Janet Cupo wrote: > Thank you, Liveson. > > My problem is this. I inherited an Access database at work which was > created by someone who doesn't really have a DB mentality, for instance, > there are about 10 different events that we are tracking, all involving the > same people, so she made a different table for every event every time it > occurred, typing the same info (names, addresses, etc.) over and over again. > So, I have spent the past couple of years, whenever I had time, trying to > consolidate all this information. My main problem is that I had previously > worked with Filemaker Pro and have basically taught myself what I know of > Access by trial and error. > > Anyway, so now I have this table with about 210 fields and a I need to add a > few, but it keeps saying that there are already 255 fields defined. So, I'm > thinking that there are fields that were part of the DB in the past, but I > have deleted them and that maybe those definitions are still hiding > somewhere clogging up the works. Is this possible? And if so, is there > someplace I can go to get rid of them? > > Thanks, > Janet > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
