Microsoft Access Limits

There have to be limits to the number and size of many things about MS Access. The limits are fairly generous, but, of course, there are always situations that exceed any limit you care to pick! Below is a table of some of the limits you might run into.

Total size of database	2 Gigabytes including space needed for system objects that the database requires
Number of objects	32,768 Total of all tables, queries, forms, reports, indices, etc. It's hard to count up the number of indices!
Characters in name of table or field	64
Fields in a table	255
Open tables	2048 including linked tables and internal tables opened by Microsoft Access itself
Characters in a text field	255
Characters in a memo field	65,535 when entered through user interface. 1 gigabyte if entered programmatically
Size of OLE object	1 gigabyte
Tables in a query	32 less if there are multivalued lookup fields included
Fields in a recordset	255
Sort limit	255 characters in 1 or more fields
Levels of nested queries	50 less if there are multivalued lookup fields
Characters in a label in form or report	2048
Characters in text box	65535
Form or report width	22.75"
Section height in form or report	22.75"
Number of levels of nested forms or reports	7
Number of printed pages in report	65535

There are more limits than these! Look in the Help files for MS Access under Getting Started > Microsoft Access Specifications.

Real World Limits

Your database may suffer from serious sluggishness long before it reaches the maximum size. The larger the database, the more important good design and good indexing become. Otherwise, the simplest action can take a long time to perform.

While there is no limit to the number of records in a table, the whole database has to fit inside 2 Gigabytes of space. How many records you can squeeze in will depend on how much data goes with each record.

When your database gets close to the maximum for any of the limits, it's time to think about switching to a more advanced database program.