ACC2000: Changing DataType or Length May Cause Data Loss or Truncation in Project

When you change the DataType or Length property of a table field in a Microsoft Access project, your data may be lost or truncated without warning.

The data in an Access project is stored directly on either a SQL Server or the Microsoft Date Engine (MSDE). SQL Server and MSDE do not return an error when a field change will delete or truncate existing data.

Data that is deleted or truncated in this manner is lost. The only way to recover the original data at this point would be to restore the original field properties, and then to recover the data from a backup you made before the data was lost. If you do not have access to a backup, you can manually re-enter the data that was lost or truncated.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Access 2000 Projects (*.adp).

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1.	Open the sample Access project NorthwindCS.adp.
2.	In the Database window, click Tables under Objects.
3.	Select the Customers table, and then on the Edit menu, click Copy.
4.	On the Edit menu, click Paste.
5.	In the Paste Table As dialog box, type TestTable as the Table name, click Data and Structure, and then click OK.
6.	Open the TestTable table in Design view.
7.	Change the Length property of the CompanyName column to 10.
8.	Save the changes; click Yes in the Save confirmation dialog box.
9.	Open the TestTable table in Datasheet view. Note that the entries in the CompanyName column are truncated at 10 characters.