Invalid argument.

[plonq]

I have been beating my forehead on my desk for the past few days trying to deal with an issue in an Access Database I inherited. The problem started the day that I took over ownership of the machine that runs queries on it, so I naturally assumed that the two events were casually related. I did debugging. I re-linked tables. I debugged some more for good measure. I cussed and tore out hear and beat up on computer accessories -- you know, all the usual things that one does when a problem like this arises. No matter how loudly I swore at it though, my query would fail after a few seconds with the descriptive error message, "Invalid argument."

I finally decided that I must be missing something obvious, so I Googled the phrase Microsoft Access "Invalid argument" and the first hit was from the Microsoft support site.

You may receive an "Invalid argument" error message when you run an append query, run a make-table query, or import data in a large Access database file

DING! DING! DING! Hey, an append query is precisely what I am trying to do!

The short answer boiled down to, "MS Access blows up on any database that exceeds 2gb in size. You either need to compact it or split it."

D'oh! How coincidental is that? The day I took over the database is the day that it hit its size limit. I couldn't find any cause linking the two events because there was no cause outside of kismet, and kismet can be a very whimsical thing.

Comments

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Things that make you love Access ;)

[hantamouse.livejournal.com]

Yea, I discovered that one too. If you delete rows, or even whole tables, the file does not get smaller. I tried to automate a huge query into bite sized chunks, constantly creating and deleting a temporary table. I always came back to work the next morning to see my workstation wishing me a cheerful "Invalid Argument".