Thanks for that quick response, John.  I realised what the coding was, and what it would allow, but in view of what you say it would seem to me that the ability to use rich text in these fields (does anyone?) does not justify the inconvenience of the consequences.  One for the software developers, perhaps.

Murdo

Thanks, Graham.  Great - if it is not too much trouble.  I have just manually edited a couple of hundred comments that I discovered had been rtf formatted (long evenings and nothing on the box!), but it may happen again or to others.  Maybe they should be made available on the Forum in case anyone else has the problem.

Murdo

Below is the function I use to remove rtf formatting in Access. Load this into an Access module so that you can call it in queries  eg fnRemoveRtf([Location].[Description]) . For reporting this is all you need to do, but if you wish to actually edit the data then include both the original columns and the formatted column in your query.  You can then copy and paste the formatted column into the original column and edit it there.  Alternatively, but not  recommended,  you can remove all the formatting from a field  in the  database by running an update query replacing the field with the unfomatted  version. eg Update Location set Location.description = fnremovertf(Location.description).  The point to note is that if you subsequently edit the record in Recorder the formatting will be added back.

For us in XML reports in Recorder 6  there is a User Defined function in the SQL Server database which will remove the formatting  (.ufn_RtfToPlaintext).

ACCESS FUNCTION

Public Function fnRemoveRtf(sRtfin As Variant) As Variant
Dim iState As Integer
Dim isState As Integer
Dim sdate As String
Dim x As Integer
If Left(sRtfin, 5) <> "{\rtf" Or IsNull(sRtfin) = True Then
   fnRemoveRtf = sRtfin
Else
   For x = 1 To Len(sRtfin)
      Select Case Mid$(sRtfin, x, 1)
      Case Is = "{"
          iState = iState + 1
         isState = 0
     Case Is = "}"
          iState = iState - 1
         isState = 0
    Case Is = "\"
         If iState = 1 Then
           If x <> 0 Then
                If Mid$(sRtfin, x - 1, 1) = "\" And isState = 1 Then
                    fnRemoveRtf = fnRemoveRtf & Mid$(sRtfin, x, 1)
                    isState = 0
                Else
                    isState = 1
                End If
            End If
         End If
    Case Is = " ", Chr$(10), Chr$(13)
      If iState = 1 Then
           If isState = 1 Then
                   isState = 0
         
            Else
                    fnRemoveRtf = fnRemoveRtf & " "
       
            End If
      End If
     Case Else
       If iState = 1 Then
         If isState = 0 Then
                 
       
           fnRemoveRtf = fnRemoveRtf & Mid$(sRtfin, x, 1)
       
        End If
      End If
       
   
   End Select
Next
fnRemoveRtf = Trim$(fnRemoveRtf)

End If

End Function

Mike

Thanks, Graham and Mike.  It seems the easy answer would be to get the rtf facility disabled at source.  All this does not seem worth the fun of having your Survey descriptions in fancy format text.

M.