The Ecco File Limit FAQ Version 1.1 22 April 2001 Author: Nick Gordon (nickg@mantech.co.uk) Introduction This is a short FAQ on the Ecco file size limitations. Since none of this was ever formally documented by Arabesque or Netmanage, it's had to be put together from various bits and pieces of information I've gathered. It owse a big debt of gratitude to a number of people who've spent their time and effort trying to understand and communicate this stuff for the benefit of the Ecco community at large. I'm not naming them, because I don't know or remember who all of them were, and I'd hate anyone to feel left out. You know who you are. Thank you. I'm pretty confident that this information is accurate; however, no warranty, express or implied attaches to this, and you have to use it at your own risk. I'm happy to try to answer questions, provided you understand that I don't have any privileged knowledge or access. If anyone can improve on the information here, please let me know, and I'll happily update it. In the emantime, I hope it's useful to you all. What exactly is the story about the Ecco item limit? How many items can I have? Ecco has (unhappily) some internal limits which result from its design. These were not an issue in the far-off, halcyon days when we were young and Ecco was new, but they have become so now that we're wizened and grey and Ecco has passed the first flush of youth. The limits are obviously not going be changed, and so we loyal disciples of the True Path have to manage our lives within their bounds. What follows are the details of the various limits. I hope they're clear and understandable. If not, please tell me and I'll do my best to make them so. Items in a file: 64,000 An item is the thing with a bullet next to it. This includes any entry in a Notepad, the Phonebook or the Calendarl. Items appearing in multiple Notepads only count as one item. Items and folders in Notepads: 64,000 This means the total of all the items and folders in all your Notepads must not exceed 64,000, and so you could break the 64K limit without actually having that many individual items. This figure will include items in Search Results and Scratch Notepads, and so if you have many items in your file, you need to be careful of this. A reminder: if the total of items OR the total of items and folder in Notepads hits 64K, you'll get the error. Total Notepads: 31 3 are already taken for Calendar, Phonebook and Search Results, and a 4th if you ever use Scratch, as I do. So you can define 27 of your own. Popup folder values: 255 I don't know whether this is per folder, or in the whole file. When I get time, I'll test it Maximum number of text folder/column values: 62K I understand this to mean that 62K is the number of different values you can have in total, adding in all the values in all the text-type folders in the file. Max number of items in a single checkmark field: 32K Max number of items in a single text field: 16K Max number of items in a single date field: 16K Max number of items in a popup field: 21K Max number of items in a number field: 10K I understand all these to mean that is the maximum number of items that can share the same folder value, of the type described. Version History Version 1.1 22 April 2001 Corrected definition of an Ecco item (thanks to Phil Seeman, Teamscope Software for pointing out the error). Version 1.0 4 February 2001