MapInfo Pro uses two native TAB file formats, MapInfo TAB (Native) and MapInfo Extended TAB (NativeX). The NativeX format was created to extend the limits on the original native format: where native TAB files have a 2GB file size limit, nativeX TAB files do not.
NativeX tables may have up to 1000 fields. The following list describes this feature and its limitations:
- You can import ASCII .TXT and .CSV files that have up to 1000 columns.
- Saving a NativeX table as a GeoPackage (GPKG) table limits the number of columns to 999, because MapInfo Pro adds an ID column to GPKG tables.
- In the Table Structure dialog, the Add button disables after 1000 fields.
- Using a MapBasic Create Table statement to create a table approaching 1000 columns at once, especially with long column names, may reach the internal MapBasic command string limit.
Note: The maximum character length of a MapBasic command or a query is 32768 bytes, or less than 16K bytes in double-byte character sets.
- Due to the MapBasic command string length limit, use the Create Table statement to make a simple table, then use the Alter Table statement within a loop to add more columns up to the maximum limit of 1000.
- MapInfo Enhanced (NativeX) tables and MIF\MID files with more than 250 columns are versioned to 1600 or later.
- When creating a new table and then adding more than 250 columns to it, MapInfo Pro automatically switches the save format to MapInfo Enhanced (NativeX).
- You cannot export NativeX tables with more than 250 columns to DBASE (*.DBF) or Microsoft Access (*.MDB\*.ACCDB), because of their file format limitations.
- You cannot export NativeX tables with more than 250 columns to Oracle, SQL Server, or PostGIS DBMS tables. You can export these tables to SQLite format tables.
The maximum number of indexes is 40.