Microsoft KB Archive/88647

= ACC: Irregular Characters in Attached dBASE IV Memo Field =

Article ID: 88647

Article Last Modified on 5/9/2003

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Access 1.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Access 1.1 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Access 2.0 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q88647



Moderate: Requires basic macro, coding, and interoperability skills.



SYMPTOMS
If you have an attached dBASE IV table with a Memo field, a strange character resembling an &quot;i&quot; (ASCII 161) appears randomly throughout the Memo field when you view it in Microsoft Access.



CAUSE
This is a result of the way dBASE IV handles its Memo fields and how this translates when you view the Memo field in Microsoft Access.

When you open a Memo field in dBASE IV, you are presented with an editor that is fixed at 65 characters per line and that cannot be adjusted. In order to format your Memo data so that it fits comfortably in the memo editor, dBASE IV inserts invisible characters that act as carriage returns. These characters become an actual part of the data in the .DBF file. Microsoft Access does not use these characters to format the Memo data because the size of a Memo field is adjustable. These characters are ignored and consequently appear in the Memo field on your form.



RESOLUTION
You can create an Access Basic procedure to remove these characters from the Memo field. The procedure should go through each record in the table and copy the Memo field, character by character, to a temporary holding area, ignoring all instances of Chr(161). The procedure should then copy the corrected string back into the Memo field.



STATUS
This behavior is by design.



MORE INFORMATION
dBASE IV is manufactured by Borland International, Inc., a vendor independent of Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding this product's performance or reliability.

Keywords: kbprb kb3rdparty KB88647

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