Access Field types change when relinking data from sql server

[Howard Firestone]

We have been using an Access (Access 2013) program where we link the program to dataviews created in sql server.



Recently we had to re-link the data views because a change had been made to them. When we relinked the data we noticed that the field type for the field used as the primary key changed from "Short Text" to "Long Text". The programmer who created the dataview from sql server said that nothing was done at that end that would have caused the change

I know how to prevent the problem from recurring. We are changing the sql server spec from VARCHAR(8000) to CHAR(20).

I was wondering if anyone had a similar experience and if they had any idea of what would have caused this to occur

[orange]

I don't use sql server, but I have used access to interact with Oracle.
A field defined with an Oracle or SQL Server datatype that does not have an equivalent in Access
is mapped to something that will fit.
I had long strings (forgotten the actual name) in Oracle that became memo fields in Access
As for SQL Server varchar(8000) would not seem to be accommodated by Short Text to me.
It may have been the relink that caused a validation of the varchar(8000) and short text; recognized the issue and corrected it to Long Text.

From M$oft

Text and Memo data types

Text and Memo data types have been renamed and given slightly modified functionality.

The Text data type has been renamed "Short Text." A Short Text field can contain up to 255 characters in a desktop database. In an Access app, the default character limit is 255, but it can be increased to 4000 in the field properties. The Memo data type has been renamed "Long Text." A Long Text field can contain up to about a gigabyte of data in a desktop database, and up to 2^30-1 bytes in an Access app.