Access 2: Can't Perform Join- Combined Fields Too Long
- From: fishwomper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Fish Womper)
- Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:37:17 GMT
I am at best a part time developer of Access databases. I use Access
2.0, as this is all my employer has on its computers. Even so, to use
this ancient version requires a fairly convoluted installation
procedure on each PC on which it is used. I am self-taught from the
help files that come with Access 2.0 and from painful experience. I've
never attended any type of training course on how to develop databases
in Access.
I have no idea how to make a module, but I can do simple commands
attached to Event Procedures.
My current project is a database to record meeting minutes, agendas,
etc for a Workplace Safety Committee of which I am the secretary.
Perhaps this isn't exactly the intended use of Access but it works
quite well. It's (for me) a complicated animal with 17 tables, 20
queries including several append and delete queries, 24 forms
(including a couple of Help forms as I don't have any other way of
making Help files), dozens of macros, and 9 different reports that can
be generated. It's probably not as efficient as it could be but like I
said it works. It has taken me a month to do from scratch including
inputting 8 months worth of data. This of course has been additional
to my normal work. My core job is not developing Access Databases.
The tables contain a number of text fields, and just one Memo field,
which is the body of the minutes for each issue. One of the text
fields is the maximum 255 bytes, the others are all the default 50
bytes or less. None of the text fields or the memo field is used in
joins or in sorts.
It's working perfectly at the moment, but a problem I've had on
occasions as I've put the data into it has been that the queries
underlying the main minutes report will not execute.
The error message reads "Can't perform join, group or sort. Combined
fields are too long". It says the combined length of fields used to
join, group or sort cannot be over 255 bytes".
The grouping and sorting is done at the report stage, but running the
underlying query produces the same message.
I have examined all my primary and indexed fields and reduced them as
much as possible, but I cannot reduce them any more.
I've been very careful with my joins, in fact the whole shebang
doesn't have all that many of them. Mainly Meeting Dates and Issue
Numbers, that's just about all.
I have managed to work around the error by breaking up my main report
into several subreports, and using a total of four queries to get the
data for the report body. Each query calls the previous one and adds
additional fields. This seems like a quick and dirty solution to me
but so far it works. I've been able to add the last 2 months worth of
data without any further problems.
My question to any Access 2 experts out there is this: Is there any
more elegant way to avoid this error, which I fear will rear its head
once I'm relying on this thing to put out minutes, agendas, etc.
Does this sort of error happen in later versions of Access or only my
version?
.
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