"Not enough memory" message

I am working on a fairly large Access application – usually about 72MB for
the app right now. The data is in a separate Access file of a little over
200MB. While designing the forms, I’m getting persistent messages that
“Access doesn’t have enough memory to perform that operation. Please close
unneeded windows or applications and try again.� This message and error
occurs when I try to save a form that I’m working on, or when I try to
Compact and Repair. Often, the form that I’m working on at the time gets
damaged and cannot be opened again in design mode, and Access doesn’t want to
let me delete it to restore the form from an older database. And even if
Access does let me delete the form, it often retains the form’s code module
in its list of modules in the VBA design window, and has lost the reference
to the module so it won’t allow it to be opened or deleted.

This has nothing to do with actual memory – the task manager shows that CPU
usage is below 20%, and the Page File Usage is flat. We used to only get this
message when the program bulked up while coding to over 100 MB – that is,
when we didn’t Compact and Repair frequently while working on it. However,
recently it has started giving this message while the app is still under 80
MB. I had one day where it pretty much did this every forty minutes or so.

It doesn’t seem to be a memory leak (unless its in Access itself) because it
happens during design, not during run-time. But it’s certainly not a classic
memory leak, since total memory usage is quite low. Needless to say, you can
close other windows or programs and this doesn’t help the problem in the
slightest. Often, the “Please close unneeded windows or applications and try
again� message pops up immediately as soon as you click its “Okay� button,
and one has to shut down Access with the Task Manager to get anything else
done.

We have one huge form on which we once exceeded the allowable number of
controls, to which Access responded with this same error message, but the
problem this time doesn’t seem to be associated with that form. During the
period where we were getting so many instances of this error, the program was
also bulking up really fast for no apparent reason. I could open a form in
design mode, close it again without doing anything to it, and the app would
be 400K bigger.

Is this a known bug? We weathered that intense episode of it by restoring
from versions we knew were good and frequently doing both Saves and the
Compact and Repair. But the program, of course, is only getting bigger in the
long run, and the problem still occurs a couple times a week. If there’s some
way to address it proactively, or fix the cause permanently, I’d love to find
that out.

I would suggest creating a new mdf file and copying every thing accross
(importing).

this, usually does the trick.

"Leon" wrote:

> I am working on a fairly large Access application – usually about 72MB for
> the app right now. The data is in a separate Access file of a little over
> 200MB. While designing the forms, I’m getting persistent messages that
> “Access doesn’t have enough memory to perform that operation. Please close
> unneeded windows or applications and try again.� This message and error
> occurs when I try to save a form that I’m working on, or when I try to
> Compact and Repair. Often, the form that I’m working on at the time gets
> damaged and cannot be opened again in design mode, and Access doesn’t want to
> let me delete it to restore the form from an older database. And even if
> Access does let me delete the form, it often retains the form’s code module
> in its list of modules in the VBA design window, and has lost the reference
> to the module so it won’t allow it to be opened or deleted.
>
> This has nothing to do with actual memory – the task manager shows that CPU
> usage is below 20%, and the Page File Usage is flat. We used to only get this
> message when the program bulked up while coding to over 100 MB – that is,
> when we didn’t Compact and Repair frequently while working on it. However,
> recently it has started giving this message while the app is still under 80
> MB. I had one day where it pretty much did this every forty minutes or so.
>
> It doesn’t seem to be a memory leak (unless its in Access itself) because it
> happens during design, not during run-time. But it’s certainly not a classic
> memory leak, since total memory usage is quite low. Needless to say, you can
> close other windows or programs and this doesn’t help the problem in the
> slightest. Often, the “Please close unneeded windows or applications and try
> again� message pops up immediately as soon as you click its “Okay� button,
> and one has to shut down Access with the Task Manager to get anything else
> done.
>
> We have one huge form on which we once exceeded the allowable number of
> controls, to which Access responded with this same error message, but the
> problem this time doesn’t seem to be associated with that form. During the
> period where we were getting so many instances of this error, the program was
> also bulking up really fast for no apparent reason. I could open a form in
> design mode, close it again without doing anything to it, and the app would
> be 400K bigger.
>
> Is this a known bug? We weathered that intense episode of it by restoring
> from versions we knew were good and frequently doing both Saves and the
> Compact and Repair. But the program, of course, is only getting bigger in the
> long run, and the problem still occurs a couple times a week. If there’s some
> way to address it proactively, or fix the cause permanently, I’d love to find
> that out.
>