difference between text and memo data types

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Hi,

I know this is a pretty basic question but I need an answer before I go much further. I know very little about ACCESS but have finally found a reason to learn it. I have a rather large database that I have imported from EXCEL into ACCESS. One critical field was imported as “memo”. I am not sure of the implications of leaving it that way or changing it to text. I know a text field only allows for 255 characters. This field is used to describe the major activity. If absolutely necessary I could reword the descritions to meet the 255 limit. I would like to know whether it would impact on any of the things I might do with this database in the future if I leave the data type as “memo”? There will be numerous queries, reports and forms. Each major activity has a UID (unique identifier) which I’ve used as the primary key. However when printing reports, queries etc. they will need to include the major activity column. Not all activities exceed the 255 limit, in fact some are quite short.

Thanks for any advice anyone can give.

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The only other difference between text and memo besides the maximum number of characters that can be stored in each – text=255, memo=64k – is that you cannot index or sort a memo field. Depending on the maximum length in your description field you could try splitting it into two text fields and then concatenate them for queries and reports. This can present its own problems however.

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thanks for the replies…guess I’ll leave it as memo for now

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