We characterize the traceability properties of linear codes. It is well known that any code of length n and minimum distance d is a c-TA code if c2 < n/(n−d). In this paper, we show that a less restrictive condition can be derived. In other words, there exists a value ZC , with n − d ≤ ZC ≤ c(n − d), such that any linear code is c-TA if c < n/ZC . We also prove that in many cases this condition is also necessary. These results are applied to cyclic and Reed-Solomon codes.