Database Design and Memo Fields

[LisaAZ]

Team - I did look through the Help and this forum for answers before I asked. (My customer uses Access 2002, with no hopes of upgrading)
I inherited a database about two years ago when I was not very verse in Access as a whole and extremely pressed for time, most of my experience was just running a simple query here or there.
I will admit I have made a number of mistakes or another way to look at it as a positive, future learning opportunities.
(mistake #1) I did not normalize the main table when I initially received it, which contained over 150 fields
(mistake #2) No PKey the main table
(mistake #3) Added fields to a bad design
(mistake #4) No relationships
(mistake #5) Not doing my homework at the very beginning
The form that uses the Main Table is in a "tabbed" format, I am using a query so where the customer enters a unique number to update the various table fields. (I am still learning about how forms work)
My question is as follows: the current Main Table now has over 170 fields (spreadsheet format), it contains 16 Memo fields. I have read alot that Memo Fields are not a good idea period. As any one of those fields could corrupt the database at anytime. Which I have experienced. I now have the opportunity to reorganize the database, my initail thought was to pull the decision making fields to one table with a PKey and SKey. and non-decision making fields to another table.
My question is about the Memo Fields - should those be in one big table (which I do not think is a good idea) or each having their own table with PKey.


Any suggestions for table normalization - (I have read a number of articles but am having trouble grasping how it all works, i believe "relationships" are what link all the different tables together)
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[orange]

Start with the first 3 topics (at least) here

http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/forum/topic238.html

And yes, memo fields can be a real bad issue

[LisaAZ]

Thanks - I am looking at the suggested web site - I have also searched many sites that come to the pretty much the same conclusion. Memo Fields are not a database's friend. However, If I should have to keep them per customer, does anyone have a recomendation on how to set up good table design for them.

[orange]

I'm not sure about "good table design for memo fields", but a few years ago, I did have memo fields in one table. I used it to keep English and French descriptive text for such things as Product and Services, Testimonials, Success stories, management philosophy, Interest in Forming partnerships/alliances , ---- things that were used to provide a lot of verbage to a topic.

The table had identifiers for related Company, LanguageCd, and the TypeOfText being stored. As I recall there were about 10 different types of text data, most of which was in 2 languages.