Error “Out of String Space” (Access 2000 Win 2000 SR-1)

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I put together a video checkout/inventory database and have been getting this strange, persistent, reproduceable, gnomic, frustrating and obscure error message: “Out of string space”. Huh? And access help (which no longer gives you open-ended word searches) was not helpful. So, I turn to you kind folks in the lounge…

Here’s the situation: Form with a subform, each one based on a separate table linked by an ID number. I also have a button on the form to display a receipt for people who have submitted a video request; the button pulls the info based on the ID of the borrower.

In the subform I have a combo box with video tape names. I added some new videos to the table from which aforementioned combo box feeds. I then put a new person into the form and clicked on the combo box for a new video title. When I tab out of it I get the strange, inscrutible, gnomic and irritating “Out of string space” error. Clicking and typing away, then hit the Receipt button. Empty reciept! Close everything, open the new person’s record, nothing nothing nothing in the subform. Go to an old record, data in subform is there, receipt works, etc.

I have done the following: 1) increase max text value to the video name field to 255. 2) tried to add the new videos to an existing record and it will NOT show in the receipt. 3) change an existing record title to one of the new ones and it will show on the receipt.

Something seems to have happened to cause the db to not accept new videos of any name in the subform. Whatever that something is, the strange little error message is my sole clue.

Does anyone have any suggestions, input or light to shed on this? I have been mucking about with this database but don’t believe I have done anything at all to effect the link between the form/subform.

I thank ya’ll in advance for your help.

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Do you get an error number 14? You need to post the specific message before anyone can research it for you. All the references I can find to out of string space errors are for 16-bit applications .

The message may mean that you’re creating a string in memory that is too big for the machine’s available resources or exceeds the maximum allowable string length. Code, and even queries, that create long strings might be at the root of the problem, but we don’t have enough specifics to help.

Hmm … I just noticed you said you tried to add the new videos to and existing record. Does that mean you’re trying to write them all into a single field? If so, that’s bad design. You need to explain more about the details of how that works in order to get a useful answer.

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There was no error number on the message box. Just the triangular exclamation point icon and an ‘OK’ button.

However, I may have fixed the problem just recently. I was trying to open a report based on the Form/Subform information and re-directed the report to pull data from a query with the tables for the Form and Subform linked up. Now it (the report) behaves properly. I also no longer get the “Out of String Space” error in the form with the subform and am able to add and subtract and change video titles willy-nilly!

Not that this really clarifies what the error message was… Very mysterious. This was one of those cases of mucking about almost at random and fixing the problem without ever really knowing what the problem was.

As far as the issue of ‘string space’, well, this is Access 2000 on Windows 2000 – not 16-bit. And there was no programatic stuff going on that i could image would generate a long string — just trying to select an item in a combo box in a subform. Very straitforward.

And as to what I mean by ‘trying to add records to an existing field’, sorry if i was not specific enough, but basically this is a subform on a form, with a combo box (among other things) on the subform. This will, in Datasheet view, generate a record per Main Form with the little plus icon indicating multiple records of information for the subreport. And since the combo box is on the subform, you can change the name of a title or add a new row to the subform for an additional title. I hope this isn’t bad practice because i do this a lot.

Anyhow, I want to thank you very much for your reponse. The Lounge has not yet failed to provide quick and accurate replies and discussions.

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Those little pluses indicate subdatasheets, which represent relationships among tables, so no, it isn’t bad design.

I hate the suckers, though, because they use up resources and can produce some ugly performance problems on slower machines. I think Microsoft included them primarily for end users rather than developers because they get in the way of real combobox controls and can cause well-designed forms to load very slowly. If you ever decide you’ve had enough of them, they can be turned off (for each table, though, one at a time) by opening the table in design view and changing the subdatasheet property to [none].

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thanks for the tip. i have noticed quirky loading on some of my db’s, even tho one is essentially a copy of the other with new data put in. and that one uses forms and subforms with combo boxes in several places. but it’s never been bad enough for me to need to fix it.

i almost never use the datasheet view either, as i find it a little confusing…I kind of like GUIs.

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Subdatasheets are there *all* the time, even in the tables themselves, since they are a property of the table itself. That’s what’s so insidious about them.

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