symantic check

[Paul200968]

Hi all,

Employees enters free tekst description of goods in a tekstfield. The question have been asked to query that database to check if they fill in the free tekstformat correctly. I understand that this is virtually impossible but we were thinking abount BLANCS, One character and maybe only values etc etc. In general is there a sysmantic checker or a module or link (Im thinking outload now, a symantic check) who could guide me with this requirement.


Hope I do make sence.

Paul from Holland.

 

[KeithG]

you could use the before update event to validate the field.

 

[Paul200968]

Im affraid that wont work, the data is allready there. Managment only wants to know what kind of "doddgy" information has been added in the free text fields. We were thinking about singe characters, blancs etc. but it would be helpfull if something similair was created or websites in this respect.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Semantics checkers are possible but difficult unless you happen to have one floating around free for the asking. Otherwise, you might have to buy one.

Here is a thought or two for you, though.

First, function LEN( string ) will tell you how long a string you have.

Second, function IsNumeric( string ) will tell you if the string could be interpreted as a number. (If you have no punctuation and no alphabetic characters, you get back TRUE.)

Third, if you pass the first two tests, you can do CInt, CLng, or other conversions (these functions are in Access Help) and do range checks on the resulting binary values.

You could write some simple-minded VBA routines to validate your data. If you find that the input violates your requirements, you can use any of several methods to notify your users. The MessageBox function comes to mind as a simple way.

If the input field passes everything except a length check, you can use a Format function to reformat it, but remember that you have to convert the text to binary in order to reformat it that way.

In other words, it might look like

MyNumericText = FORMAT( CLng( MyNumericText), "0#####" )

Or something similar.