Formatted text in column choices (XP SP2)

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I want to have a column that let’s me format the data. It’s for a FAQ. I think I can’t do that with text or Memo so I’m trying a Wordpad OLE based column. Am I right? What are the issues I might come across with having an OLE object in my DB?

Thanks,

Bryan

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What exactly are you trying to accomplish? There is a rich text format textbox you can use that allows formatting, but there is always a risk of corruption using OLE objects because they aren’t as firmly linked to the database as the data in native fields. Saying it’s for a FAQ isn’t really all that enlightening since you haven’t indicated whether this is part of the Access application or you’re just storing FAQ information in Access for an entirely different application, let alone how you want to use it.

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It’s an Access app that simply stores a FAQ for other apps. I’ve a key, type, question, answer as the table. I want the answer to be able to have formatting such as bold, italic, bullets & numbers. Nothing more is really required. Right now, answer is simply a text box. I played with OLE Wordpad but figured there might be issues which is why I asked.

Do I understand you correctly that I can have a native text box that is rich text (not OLE)? If so, how? I don’t see it in my choices.

Bryan

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As Charlotte pointed out, having an OLE object in your database is not ideal. You run the risk of database corruption, and working with the Microsoft Richtext Control is not all that easy.

The easiest way out is to use unformatted text.

If you really need formatted text, you could create the FAQ as a Word document and bookmark the subjects. In the table in the database, create a hyperlink field and enter hyperlinks to specific bookmarks in the Word document. Alternatively, you could create a text field that holds the bookmark names, and use the Application.FollowHyperlink method to refer to the document as Address and bookmark as SubAddress.

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That’s pretty much what I thought (about OLE) but I was hoping for RTF native. Why is using it difficult? BTW, I searched help and found nothing about Rich Text.

I’d really like to have the data in Access. It was in word, but started to get a bit large and WordXP seems really unstable. I miss 2000 which never crashed on me!

Bryan

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The Microsoft Rich Text control is not a native Access control, but an ActiveX control. It may not be present on every PC. To put it on your form (if you have it), click the More Controls button on the Toolbox, and find the Microsoft Rich Textbox Control 6.0 (SP4). When you have selected it, your mouse pointer changes to a cross and hammer. Click on your form, or drag a rectangle.

The problem with this control is, that to populate it you must either use the LoadFile method to load an external .RTF file into it, or find some way to store/retrieve RTF strings in the database.

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Why is it difficult? Because Access is a database, not a desktop publisher or word processor. It’s the data that is important, not the presentation. RTF is a format and underneath the visible format is a bunch of instructions telling the OS and the application how to display the contents. Adding all that overhead to a database is an excellent way to make it unmanageably large very quickly. Why not store the data in Access and present it using formatting. You could store items like headings in a separate field and then use formatting on the form you use to display them. I’ve built something like that myself before as a form-based help file.

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Charlotte:

I’m not sure what you’re talking about with the word ‘difficult’. I don’t remember mentioning that except perhaps someone else said that using the Rich Text control is difficult. Anyway… I KNOW that Access is a db and that formatting isn’t normally something you’d want to store. However, this database isn’t large so size should not be an issue. I can’t (or have no idea how to ) easily handle the presentation outside of the db since, for example, I want to bold individual words in the answer text. In this case both the data and the presentation are important. I used to have this in Word, but I’m having trouble with it crashing a lot. Seems to be the wrapped graphic issue talked about on the word forum, but even after removing it I’ve problems. I just don’t have time to deal with it so — Access!

Thanks for the continued help and education,

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