Fields filled with ########

[Guest]

User states that when he runs a quiry report, in some of the fields where
there should be dates, it comes back #########. This never used to happen
before he got upgraded to Windows Vista.
User called back for an update on this issue. He states that he and several
employees who were upgraded to MS Windows Vista and Office 2007 are
experiencing the same problem with the same reports in MS Access 2007. Caller
states that he contacted the person in charge of the Database. He states the
Database Manager does not want to rewrite these queries, so she wants the
service desk to investigate this issue. Asked caller if he tried expanding
the column, as sometimes the pound sign indicates the information is too big
for the column width. Caller did try that, however it did not resolve the
issue. Caller states he was told that it might be a data format issue. Caller
states the specific columns in question are date/time information. Advised
caller I would update the ticket with this information.

Does anyone have any possible solutions or thoughts?

 

[Ken Snell \(MVP\)]

First, verify that the data in the table itself are not corrupted. The #
character can be an indication of record corruption.

I've checked with some other MVPs who've worked with Vista as an operating
system (I prefer to stay with Windows XP Professional SP2 at this time).
Vista is much more "aggressive" about displaying # characters when the
number of characters to be displayed will not fit within the width of the
control or field. You note that the user has tried widening the control,
without getting rid of the # characters. Ensure that the user has made the
control excessively wide just to be sure. Is it possible that the date/time
value that Vista thinks should be displayed is also including the time part
of the value (thus meaning that the width will need to be even wider)?

Also, check that the Format property of the control matches the type of data
that are to be displayed.