Just out of curiosity:
I believe that if you have a text-field with a field size of, let's say, 25 characters, and you use only 10, Access fills the other 15 spaces to get to the 25 characters.

Questions:
1. if you leave the field empty, does Access use 25 characters to fill the field or is it left empty?
2. if Access fills the field to 25, does every character use the same amount of diskspace as a normal character (1, 2, 3, a, b, c etc)

The reason I ask this is that in my database for speedskating times I most of the times have the seperate times of each distance from which you can calculate the points. But sometimes I only have the points, and not the seperate times.

In those cases where I have both the times and the point totals I can use the point field to verify if the calculated points are the same as the given points (sometimes there is a difference). But if this means that the database will grow extra fast I will leave the field empty, and only use it in those cases where I only have the points?

Thanks Hein

Hein,

The field size for text only establishes an upper limit for the number of characters that will be allowed in the field. If you enter only a single character in a text field, the the size it occupies will just be the single character.

Glenn

Glenn
I understand that Access doesn't "fill the remaining blanks" with somesort of a character.
I also understand that this means that, although I have a field for holding "total-points", I must only use this in case there are no single distance times available

Thanks for your answer
Hein

You are welcome, Hein.

Glenn