Size Property

See Also    Example    Applies To    Specifics

Sets or returns a value that indicates the maximum size, in bytes, of a Field object.

Settings and Return Values

The setting or return value is a constant that indicates the maximum size of a Field object. For an object not yet appended to the Fields collection, this property is read/write. The setting depends on the Type property setting of the Field object, as discussed under Remarks.

Remarks

For fields (other than Memo type fields) that contain character data, the Size property indicates the maximum number of characters that the field can hold. For numeric fields, the Size property indicates how many bytes of storage are required.

Use of the Size property depends on the object that contains the Fields collection to which the Field object is appended, as shown in the following table.

Object appended to Usage
Index Not supported
QueryDef Read-only
Recordset Read-only
Relation Not supported
TableDef Read-only

When you create a Field object with a data type other than Text, the Type property setting automatically determines the Size property setting; you don't need to set it. For a Field object with the Text data type, however, you can set Size to any integer up to the maximum text size (255 for Microsoft Jet databases). If you do not set the size, the field will be as large as the database allows.

For Long Binary and Memo Field objects, Size is always set to 0. Use the FieldSize property of the Field object to determine the size of the data in a specific record. The maximum size of a Long Binary or Memo field is limited only by your system resources or the maximum size that the database allows.