combo box only imports part of a table entry

  • Thread starter Thread starter merlin
  • Start date Start date
M

merlin

I have a database containing several combo boxes but when I try to
select text from a specific cell in a table it only imports part of the
text from that cell. Can anyone explain why? I am a novice at this, so
please be aware of that.
 
Hi Karl,
Thanks for responding.
The problem is:
Row Source Type is: Table/Query
Row Source is: Data Table - Write-Up Source.
Basically, I have a set of operations that are listed in the Data Table
- Write-Ups Source in the database, say Operations 1 to 39, and each
Combo box, of which there are 39, is used to select one of the
operations from the data table. In some of the operations there are 10
lines of text, which can be called up in any of the 39 Combo boxes.
What's happening is that I select one of these operations from the
table to display it in a Combo box and it only draws in about 3 to 5
lines of the text from the table. This is weird. Why does it pull only
part of the text in from the table?

The data base has been set up to make writing shop floor instructions
just that bit easier for the person authoring them; they simply pick
the phrase (texts) which match or virtually match what they wish to say
and, if necessary, modify the texts if they are not quite suitable for
the new instructions. It does make things just that bit easier for the
end user and ensures that the authors use standard phraseiology.
 
I'll bet you are getting 255 characters. Comboboxes do not support memo
fields well (and for good reasons in my opinion). They truncate the text to
255 characters (which is going to be three to five lines depending on width
of the controls, embedded returns, etc.).

You will need to write code to retreive the value from the table as needed.
You could write your code to grab the data as you do now and if the length
of the retrieved value is 255 characters in link, then get the value from
the table.
 
John,

You are absolutely right, it is 255 characters! Unfortunately, I am not
a programmer, so I don't understand what you mean by 'code to grab the
data'. I'll have to do a bit of digging to resolve this one. Seems a
bit of an oversight that the Combo doesn't do this simple task!

Thanks,

Steve
 
Not really an oversight in my opinion, since a memo field can be really large -
up to one gig if I remember rightly - it makes sense to truncate it at some
point. Besides, you couldn't really display that much data (255 characters) in
one line of combobox anyway.

If you need the data for some other reason, it is pretty simple to use the
DLookup function to grab it as needed or use a custom function and a query to do
so. As long as the combobox has the primary key of the table containing the
data you need.
 
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