Changing fields

[krill]

Hi chaps....


Is there a way in "code" to change the data type of an existing field ..eg. a text field to a memo field in Microsoft Access 97. I don't want to muck around if I can with deleteing and appending new fields ..this database is aready active with real data.

 

[Phathi]

Hi,

In Oracle there is an ALTER TABLE command, where you can

ALTER TABLE tabName modify colName NewDataType

I suppose in Access (it uses Microsoft Jet) it would be the same.

The syntax of ALTER TABLE is


ALTER TABLE table {ADD {COLUMN field type[(size)] [NOT NULL] [CONSTRAINT index] |
CONSTRAINT multifieldindex} |
DROP {COLUMN field I CONSTRAINT indexname} }
[b/]
I haven't heard of column modifying... but you never know, that Gates is something else...

Ciao
Phathi

 

[jcj88]

If you are doing it in Access, why not use the access front end?

Create a new table that you want your old table to look like, then copy the data in. Then rename and viola.

 

[krill]

I looked at he sql commands for altering tables..ad it seems to be only useful if you are deleting or adding columns..not changing the actual data type Also I can't use access because this app is run on over 60 machines nation wide and some of them don't even have access loaded. I was hoping to make a nice quick exe to "patch" the table structure...I probably can still do this but I will have to play around with creating temporary tables and deleting and adding columns...I was hoping there was a quick way.