-1 in table

[ucdcrush]

I'm working on a fairly large database (124 thousand records, 30
fields) and once in awhile I notice that my table has
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1

in a field that corresponds to another field (e.g. some of the
"restaurant type: seafood" will have -1 -1 -1, others will be fine but
other restaurant types wont be affected).

Usually I've been doing a good amount of querying, cutting and pasting
at that point (but I've never pasted a -1 anywhere at all)..

Any ideas what's going on with it or how to prevent?

 

[Ron Hinds]

-1 is the Access equivalent of True or Yes (0 being False or No). If you
haven't set a "Yes/No" field to display otherwise it will show this way. No
need to "prevent" it - it is normal behavior.

 

[ucdcrush]

Thanks for the reply. The fields that have "sprouted" the -1s are just
text fields, and never contain the strings 'true' 'false' or any
numbers, which is why it seems abnormal. The field only includes
restaurant types like "fast food"..

The -1 = true is a nice clue, but I still don't see why it's appearing
there unless somehow a query is doing it somehow (though I hadn't been
doing an update query before it happened, just select queries)..

 

[John Vinson]

Thanks for the reply. The fields that have "sprouted" the -1s are just
text fields, and never contain the strings 'true' 'false' or any
numbers, which is why it seems abnormal. The field only includes
restaurant types like "fast food"..

These aren't Lookup fields are they?

If these are popping up *in a Select query* please post the SQL of the
query. If they're in an actual table datasheet I'm as perplexed as you
are!

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[ucdcrush]

Nope they are not lookup fields. It's just a big database of
restaurants, type, and location. I was doing many select queries for
restaurant type and name and such, but never saw and -1s in there, I
only saw them after I was done with the queries and went to look
something up in the table.