Bloated MS Access db

[Lou_Reed]

What happens when an MS Access 2010 database file ( a *.accdb file) is compacted? It seems that when I am working on a database, that the files become really big and bloated.

Running it through the compact and repair procedure make it much smaller. I like that, but the question is how does it get there - to a small file?

Why do databases get so huge and bloated?

Any help appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Respectfully,

Lou Reed

[orange]

see this for more info

[John_G]

Doing a lot of development work, i.e. frequent modification of forms and reports to get them right will also cause significant bloating, even if there is only a small amount of data for testing.

[JoeM]

Deleting lots of data or tables will also bloat it. When you delete things, they really aren't deleted from the database until you do a Compact & Repair (they are just "marked" for deletion).