Database size

[pontitt]

Hi All,

I imported some data from a 2.8MB Excel workbook, to a blank 200k Access
database.

After the import, the blank database got to be 16MB.

I tried to export the Excel file to txt format as well, it got 8MB.



Can you please help, how this can be, whether Excel compact information
better, and what can I do to reduce the Access database size?

Thanks!

[nicknameoscar]

Try doing a compact and repair in Access. This can be performed by clicking on the MS Office icon (round and in the extreme left corner) then clicking Manage and then clicking Compact and Repair.

[pontitt]

Thanks, I forget to mention, that I compacted the database before close.

Even with compacting, the 4 times difference remained, and just would like to better understand, how Excel can manage better data in terms of size of the database?

[pontitt]

Inbetween it seems I got the answer :

Excel 2007 stores information in xml sheets, in a zip container, that means when I see 2.8MB as file size, it is a compressed size.

When opening the zip container, and checking the xml sheet, I was surprised to see, that actually it is 16MB.

So, the difference in size is nothing to do with Access, I am now more confident

However, it might be useful, if I export to a txt file, that is 6MB, and then link it to the Access. Or, link the Excel file itself.
The only qusetion remains: which do you think is the fastest way then to run queries against the back end:
- storing everything in Access - huge size, queries running fast
- storing everything in txt - smaller, but not as small size as Excel, however queries might run faster
- storing everithing in Excel - smallest size, but not sure on query speeds, for the first sight it seems to be slowest, as first Access needs to extract compressed information

What do you think? Cheers: pontitt