I just stumbled across something while working on my AI slide generator that I wanted to share.

My database had mysteriously grown to almost 1 GB, and I couldn't figure out why. I wasn't storing images in tables. I wasn't embedding huge graphics in reports. So where was all that space going?

It turns out the culprit was the Picture Type property on an Image control.

By default, when you add an Image control to a form or report, its Picture Type is set to Shared. That's fine if you're using static images that you insert at design time. But if you're like me and you're changing the image in VBA...

BackgroundImage.Picture = CurrentProject.Path & "\Images\" & BGImage

...then you might be in for a surprise.

I'm building a slide generator that swaps different background images in and out as I move from slide to slide. Every time the code assigned a new image, Access quietly added another copy to the Image Gallery. Even worse, it added duplicates of the same image over and over again. My Image Gallery ended up looking like this:

* Background-Access
* 1_Background-Access
* 2_Background-Access
* 3_Background-Access
* ...

Hundreds of duplicate images later, my database had ballooned to nearly a gigabyte!

The fix was simple. Change the Image control's Picture Type property from Shared to Linked. After doing that, I could swap images all day long without Access stuffing copies into the Image Gallery.

I then purged the Image Gallery (as shown in the video above), compacted the database, and my file size dropped from about 800+ MB to 111 MB.

So if you're dynamically changing images in VBA, make sure your Image controls are set to Linked instead of Shared. It'll save you a lot of disk space and a lot of head scratching.

I'm planning to make a follow-up TechHelp video on this because I think it's one of those little Access quirks that can catch a lot of developers by surprise. Stay tuned!