What is the best practice as far as linked images to display in a form where the path to the image is stored in a table? I have used .bmp so far and had no troubles, however I need to add scans of certifications into my db, there could be as many as 5 or 6 per employee and there are 250 employees. I am thinking to use .jpg for this to keep the stored image size down, but have noticed that if I use jpg; Access has to run an quick "import" for each image prior to displaying it. When I link to bmp's Access doesn't do that and there is no lag as a result. Am I better off staying with the bmp format for my scans regardless of the fact that they tend to be about three times the size (KB)?
What is best for the long term health of the db?

Thanks

Best option is not store the images in the database, period. Store a path to images, or the name of the image file and produce the path on demand in relation to the path to the database and just show the images as needed on forms and reports. Storing images in Access databases will cause them to bloat enormously.

This is supposed to be different with Access 2007, but I'm not familiar with it so I can' comment on 2007.

Most scanned images are output in a .tif format ...
I am currently building a large Access application to display scanned images from the courthouse (probate records) ...
I convert the .tif to a .pdf and display the images within Access using a third party ActiveX control for PDF files ...

I have over 170,000 images available at the moment for viewing ...

RDH

Hi,
I'm confused by your question. Do you store the images (which shouldn't be done as already mentioned) or do you link to the external files with the full path? You mention something about both in your post.
HTH
Good luck

Rick

These images are scans of wallet sized certifications. In bitmap format they are about 600 KB. Access seems to be able to display the bitmap faster and cleaner than the jpeg. So I think I'll stay with the bitmap format for this part of the project. I have one more question for you as you are obviously working on a very large project. I have a table that will contain daily work hours information from each employee. There are approx 250 Employees, thus there will be approximately 1500 records entered into this table weekly (Mon -> Sat). Can access manage this amount of information reasonably over the course of say a year (1500 * 52) 78,000 records? Will I need to be concerned about archiving records from this table? The table is small (8 fields) One date, several two digit numbers and a few Yes/No. There would likely only be one user writing data into this table at a time, and rarely, one additional user querying against it.
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks again

Oliver,

I am linking to the image with the full file path, I am aware of the DB bloating issue.

Ricky,

Just curious with 0ver 170000 images what process do you use to convert to .jpg formatting ?

Thank You

As I replied earier .. over 170,000 images ...
This means that there in a record for each image ...
This is only for the current year ....

For what you are talikng about ... Access should be able to handle your input.
I will have to go the SQL Server or MySQL due to the amount of data entry over time ...

RDH

Thank You

As I replied ... I end up with PDF files.
I receive the files in a tif format ...
I use a third party ActiveX to convert the tif to a pdf using VBA.

RDH