>I've got a number of 'free form' questions for which I'm using memo fields to collect the data. What are your thoughts on the use of them?
>
>Mandy


Mandy, I'm developing an app where I'm converting about 100 MB of existing files. Many of those files had note fields of about 40 bytes width. One file might have as many of 4 of those fields. In my conversion I dump all of the notes into a single memo field. There is a noticeable space saving.

I experimented with different "blocksize" settings and settled on 48. (The length of the memo field is rounded up to a multiple of 48 bytes.) That gave me the most compact files. (YMMV :)

One thing to note about memo fields is that if you expand the contents across the next 48 byte boundary than the old contents become garbage and sit there until the file is packed.

My attitude now is that I will consider using a memo field for anything that is around 48 bytes in size and possibly larger.

Peter Robinson