Formatted memo field (Access 97/SR2)

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Paradox allowed you to format the text in a memo field. It had a specific field type called Formatted Memo. It does not appear that Access 97 allows you to format the text. Specifically, it will not show Bold and Italic font in the field. I can’t underline individual words, either. We may be out of luck.

Thanks.

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The company FMS has an add-in that allows you to use formatted text in memo fields.

http://www.fmsinc.com/

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Thanks, Tom. I will check into it.

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Microsoft also has a Rich Text control that lets you work with formatted text in a memo field. You should be able to find it referenced in the Knowledge base, and it was a freebie the last time I checked.

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Thanks to you, too.

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I looked in the Knowledge Base and could not find anything like you mentioned. Do you have an idea of where it might be?

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The “More Controls” tool in your form design toolbox should include a “Microsoft Rich Textbox Control, version 6.0” ActiveX control. You can bind it to the memo field through its Control Source property.

I haven’t used it myself, although I did just try it out — it seems to display RTF text nicely (and this text is retained in your memo field), but I haven’t figured out a way to format the text from within the form field (I pasted some RTF text into the field to try it out).

Anyone… Anyone…

Hope this helps.

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I just realized you are using Access97. I believe the RTF Textbox ActiveX control was distributed through the Office97 Developer edition. I think maybe it came with Visual Basic also, but I’m not sure. There are licensing issues to be considered too – presumably you need to own one of those products to work with it. The FMS version of an RTF control is focused on 2000 – with ActiveX that may or may not be an issue. One other alternative is to use Word as your editor and store your text in a Word doc as an OLE object. They tend to be pretty cumbersome to work with however.

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Personally, I don’t like rich text controls or attempting to format memo fields. Access is a database program, not a text editor. Yes, there are controls you can add in that will let you do this, but formatting is NOT data. If you add that kind of control, you also pay a penalty in application size, complexity of maintenance and performance.

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