too many fields defined

Question

I have a form based on 11 tables. The fields on all the tables combined are a little more than 250. I then have a form that pulls fields from all of those tables. When I try to run the form, I receive the error message "Too many fields defined". I have tried compacting already, so I was wondering if you had any other ideas. I read the maximum amount of fields in a form are over 700.

Any help would be great. Thank you!

Answer 1

You need to seriously revisit your design.  No user will ever be capable of navigating a form with 250+ controls...  This makes me doubt that your database is properly normalized.

One way or another, you need to look into splitting your form and incorporating sub-forms and linking them to the main form.

Answer 2

In addition to the other comments (with which I agree), while the maximum of controls possible on a form is 754, that's over the lifetime of the form. If you delete controls from the form, the total number of controls left is permanently reduced.

Answer 3

As the others have indicated, your design is suspect, if this is the case. 

What I suggest you do is take a screen shot of your form and upload it to Skydrive (or some other shared cloudspace) so we can take a look and offer suggestions. But I agree that there is a good chance your database design is seriously flawed. It would also help if you explain what your database and this specific form is used for.

Answer 4

It is very unusual to have data from 11 tables on one form. A table or a couple tables contains data about one subject. So you could consider making forms per subject.

Besides that, most times you have one-to-many relationships between tables. That means you can not put all the data from the tables on a single form. You will have to use subforms anyway.

If you tell us more about the type of data involved we might be able to guide you furtther.

Answer 5

Try splitting the form into several subforms.