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  1. #1
    pontitt is offline Novice
    Windows XP Access 2007
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    4

    Cool Database size

    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!

  2. #2
    nicknameoscar is offline Advanced Beginner
    Windows XP Access 2000
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Earlysville, VA
    Posts
    91
    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.

  3. #3
    pontitt is offline Novice
    Windows XP Access 2007
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    4

    Question

    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?

  4. #4
    pontitt is offline Novice
    Windows XP Access 2007
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    4
    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

Please reply to this thread with any new information or opinions.

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