formatting data

  • Thread starter Thread starter Betsy
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Betsy

Hi-

I need some help & feedback. I have a client who asked me to build a
database so that she could extract quotes from books that she is reading for
her doctoral thesis. She wanted to be able to search these quotes by
content and also by keywords that she'd assign as appropriate. We have her
data entry screen and reports set up and working quite well. The search
features work well, too, allowing her to view specific quotes easily on
screen, or to generate meaningful reports.

After inputting some weeks of data, she encountered an author who makes
extensive use of italics and other formatting. She feels that she must have
this in her data, and I don't know how to get it in there. The quotes are
entered into a memo field. I am not able to get Access to display
italicized individual words or phrases. The only formatting in Access that
I know is either in the datasheet view (we don't go there and it effects all
the text, anyway) or in reports. But reports wouldn't work for words
scattered here and there through her text. I'd have to format a report for
each individual quote.

I considered setting up a hyperlink field so that she could type these
extracted quotes into Word insead of into Access and do whatever formattting
she pleases in Word. But then we'd lose the searching and query power of
Access. I think. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

We are working in Access XP. Might there be formatting in 2003?

Can anyone give me some ideas based on experience here?

Thanks for any/all feedback-

Betsy
 
Betsy said:
Hi-

I need some help & feedback. I have a client who asked me to build a
database so that she could extract quotes from books that she is reading for
her doctoral thesis. She wanted to be able to search these quotes by
content and also by keywords that she'd assign as appropriate. We have her
data entry screen and reports set up and working quite well. The search
features work well, too, allowing her to view specific quotes easily on
screen, or to generate meaningful reports.

After inputting some weeks of data, she encountered an author who makes
extensive use of italics and other formatting. She feels that she must have
this in her data, and I don't know how to get it in there. The quotes are
entered into a memo field. I am not able to get Access to display
italicized individual words or phrases. The only formatting in Access that
I know is either in the datasheet view (we don't go there and it effects all
the text, anyway) or in reports. But reports wouldn't work for words
scattered here and there through her text. I'd have to format a report for
each individual quote.

I considered setting up a hyperlink field so that she could type these
extracted quotes into Word insead of into Access and do whatever formattting
she pleases in Word. But then we'd lose the searching and query power of
Access. I think. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

We are working in Access XP. Might there be formatting in 2003?
Click to expand...

In all versions of Access you would have to use an ActiveX control to
support RTF formatted text. In that scenario you are still storing the
data in a memo field, but you store along with the text all of the RTF tags
that control formatting. The RichText ActiveX control can interpret those
tags and display the text appropriately.

Since the memo field would now include all of the RTF tags, it makes the
data pretty much unusable in any control other than an RTF control (kind of
like looking at an HTML file in Notepad). This might also have
ramifications for your Searching/Filtering functions.
 
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