>>Where do you get DataType? From DataColumn? It doesn't have a Length property. What I am saying is you can't decide checking string's length.
>
>Here are the two ways of getting the field length, either from a dataset or directly from a column:
>
>

>    ' Return the field length
>    ' expO1 DataSet
>    ' expC1 Table
>    ' expC2 Field
>    Public Shared Function GetFieldLength(ByVal toDataSet As DataSet, ByVal tcTable As String, _
>     ByVal tcField As String) As String
>        Dim loColumn As DataColumnCollection
>        loColumn = GetColumn(toDataSet, tcTable)
>        Return loColumn.Item(loColumn.IndexOf(tcField)).MaxLength
>    End Function
>
>    ' Return the field length by the use of a columns
>    ' expO1 DataSet
>    ' expC1 Table
>    ' expC2 Field
>    Public Shared Function GetFieldLengthFromColumn(ByVal toColumn As DataColumnCollection, _
>     ByVal tcField As String) As String
>        Return toColumn.Item(toColumn.IndexOf(tcField)).MaxLength
>    End Function
>
>

>
>GetColumn() is as follow:
>
>

>    ' Return the columns from a table
>    ' expO1 DataSet
>    ' expC1 Table
>    Public Shared Function GetColumn(ByVal toDataSet As DataSet, Optional ByVal tcTable As String = "Temp") _
>     As DataColumnCollection
>        Return toDataSet.Tables(tcTable).Columns
>    End Function
>

That's what I was afraid of. You're using MaxLength. Test it you'd get -1 for both char fields and memo field.
Cetin