Long to Varchar2

How come I can change a LONG to a VARCHAR2 in MSAccess but I can't do it in Oracle? This is on a populated table of course, it would work in Oracle if the column was empty. It just seems strange that Oracle which is far better than Access, would not allow users to change datatypes when there is data, even if the change would require truncation or data conversion... Any ideas as to why? Received on Fri Sep 04 1998 - 08:43:49 CDT