Knowledge Base

ACC2000: Memo Field Characters Are Displayed as Question Marks

Article ID: 254845

Article Last Modified on 7/16/2004

APPLIES TO

Microsoft Access 2000 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q254845

Advanced: Requires expert coding, interoperability, and multiuser skills.

This article applies only to a Microsoft Access database (.mdb).

For a Microsoft Access 2002 version of this article, see 291541.

SYMPTOMS

After you enter thousands of characters of text into a Memo field, at a certain point, you notice that question marks appear, instead of text.

CAUSE

The Memo field is in a linked Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 table.

RESOLUTION

This problem has been fixed in the latest edition of the Jet Service Pack. For additional information about how to obtain the latest version of the Jet 4.0 database engine, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

239114 How To: Obtain the Latest Service Pack for the Microsoft Jet 4.0 Database Engine

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce the Behavior

Create a table in Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 by running the following script in the SQL Server Query Analyzer:

   Use pubs
   go

   CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TABLE2] (
      [TABLEid] [int] NULL ,
      [ID] [int] IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL ,
      [BitField] [bit] NOT NULL ,
      [Data] [text] NULL 
   ) ON [PRIMARY] TEXTIMAGE_ON [PRIMARY]
   GO

In a new database in Access 2000, create a link to the SQL Server table that you created in Step 1, and select the ID field as the primary key.
Open the linked table in Datasheet view.
Type 1 in the TABLEid field.
Click in the Data field, and type or paste 3000 characters or more in the field.
Commit the record.
Expand the Data field, and then click in the field to create a blinking mouse pointer.
Press the DOWN ARROW key to scan through the text in the field.
After several seconds of pressing the DOWN ARROW key and moving through the field, note that question marks appear around the 2,000th character.

Additional query words: pra attached

Keywords: kbbug KB254845

Microsoft KB Archive/254845

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