Microsoft Access Field Properties - Field Size

Field Size 

Field properties are where you fine tune the table.  The data type provides general information about the type of data that a field is going to contain and in the properties is where you define it more exactly.



The first property is field size, the only data types that have this property are text, number and autonumber.  The other data types have the field size fixed by the data type.  
The text data type can change the field size to define how much data can be typed into the cell by limiting the number of characters.  The maximum is 255, the default is 50 but it can be changed as necessary.  The field size does not control the amount of disk space the field is taking up – that is dependent on what you type in on the field.






With the number data type it depends on the range of values that are to be typed in as to what field size is required.  Also it is the field size that controls the size that the data takes and not the value.
The Autonumber data type has two number sizes that can be used, Long Integer or Replication ID.