Compact and repair db question

[JasonPurdueEE]

Hello everybody.
Quick question: What exactly does the Compact and Repair Database function do? I realize it probably does exactly as it say, compacts and repairs, but what is it compacting? And what is the reccommended frequency of running this? Are there problems with running it too often?

JASON

 

[psemianonymous]

No problems running it as often as you wish.

Compact compacts the size of the database down to what is actually used - Access doesn't necessarily free up space that is not used. So if you delete a table, the file size remains the same. After a compact though, the database size will reflect this change in size.

A good example of this is importing huge text files multiple times. Import it once, delete a table, import it again with slightly different parameters, delete it again, etc. This can (and has) boosted my databases to 200MB in a few hours, and they compacted down to 60MB.



Repair fixes some corruption errors. There is still a great deal of things repair *won't* do, but some types of database corruption are fixed by repair.

--
Find common answers using Google Groups:

http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.databases.ms-access

Corrupt MDBs FAQ

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/corruptmdbs.htm

 

[JasonPurdueEE]

Hey foolio12,
thanks for the info.
JASON