Large Address Awareness (LAA) in 32-bit Access



First Published 25 Nov 2023

Starting with version 2310, 32-bit Access is now (finally) large address aware.
This means that 32-bit Access will now be able to use 4 GB of virtual memory (compared to 2 GB previously) as was already the case for 64-bit Access.

There is an excellent article by Philipp Stiefel, The /LARGEADDRESSAWARE (LAA) flag demystified which explains the impact of this change on 32-bit Access apps.

Enabling LAA should significantly reduce or eliminate out of memory errors such as those below:

System Resource Exceeded Error Not Enough Memory Error


In addition to reducing memory errors, you may also find that certain processes run faster.

In most instances, users of 32-bit Access won't notice any difference.
However, when working on certain demanding processes which run successfully in 64-bit Access, these may now run without error in 32-bit Access (or run slightly faster).

For example, I tested loading several large JSON files into my JSON Analyse & Transform for Access (JATFA) app and noticed some very definite improvements:

LAA Tests JATFA 1

LAA Tests JATFA 2
NOTE:
a)   LAA will now be automatically enabled if you have 32-bit Access 2016/2019/2021/365 version 2310 or later.

b)   Various tools are available which will allow you to manually enable LAA for older versions of Access such as 2010 or 2013.

      To do this, I recommend using the code available with Philipp Stiefel's article.
      This MUST be run from a different Office app such as Excel.



Further Reading

The /LARGEADDRESSAWARE (LAA) flag demystified       Philipp Stiefel (CodeKabinett.com) - Nov 2020

Use large address awareness to fix out of memory issues in 32-bit Access      Colin Riddington (Bytes.com) - Jan 2021

Database Application constantly out of memory / system resources exceeded after migration to ODBC SQL       Discussion thread (Access World Forums) - Aug 2023

Access is finally Large Address Aware      Karl Donaubauer (Access Forever blog) - Nov 2023



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Colin Riddington           Mendip Data Systems                 Last Updated 25 Nov 2023



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