MySQL Bugs: #51548: VARCHAR > 255 fields are converted to text(255) in Access 97

Bug #51548	VARCHAR > 255 fields are converted to text(255) in Access 97
Submitted:	26 Feb 2010 12:01	Modified:	14 Nov 2012 9:49
Reporter:	Mirel Stoica	Email Updates:
Status:	Unsupported	Impact on me:	None
Category:	Connector / ODBC	Severity:	S2 (Serious)
Version:	5.1.6	OS:	Windows (XP)
Assigned to:	Bogdan Degtyariov	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
In Access 97, when linking a table containing a VARCHAR(>255) or TEXT field to a MySQL Connector/ODBC DSN, the fields were shown as TEXT(255) in the table structure.
(MyODBC 3.51 does map the fields correctly but I cannot use it due to different errors)

The server is:
protocol_version        - 10
version                 - 5.1.37-community
version_comment         - MySQL Community Server (GPL)
version_compile_machine - ia32
version_compile_os      - Win32

the table charset is latin1, odbc settings latin1

How to repeat:
- create a table with VARCHAR > 255
- create a MyODBC 5.x DSN
- open access 97 and link the above table using the above DSN
- look at the table structure

Hi Mirel and thanks for your report.

Can you please check for me what's the biggest varchar field size Access can handle? My assumption is it's 255 and what happens is that Access tries first bigger field type but keeps the size limit of original type. This happens to almost everything Access/MSSQL can't handle.

Hi
is true ms access cannot handle fields > 255 but it should be mapped to MEMO field type as in myODBC 3.51

because of wrong mapping of field type, the row with the cell that contains data > 255 appears as #Error in all fields and Access throws error:
"The field is too small to accept the amount of data you attempted to add ..."

Mirel, can you please attach ODBC trace of the problem (see docs on how to enable tracing).

No feedback was provided for this bug for over a month, so it is
being suspended automatically. If you are able to provide the
information that was originally requested, please do so and change
the status of the bug back to "Open".

See bug: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=60994.

It was decided not to support Access 97 in any MySQL products.
Sorry for inconvenience.