Rich Text Fields in MS ACCESS

Question

it has recently been suggested to use a table within the application to store helpfile information in a rich text field and display it in a form activated by the help key F1. If the rtf file created in MS Word, saved as rtf and copied into the rtf field graphics and pictures that are part of the rtf are not displayed. Is there a solution? After all HTML which is thougt to be the basis for rtf accepts pictures.

Thanks for any ideas on this, boz

Answer 1

Hi, I have not tested it but I suspect the Access version of RTF is a little less powerful than Word's version. If you do it manually, can you enter images to the RTF field in the table?

Answer 2

it has recently been suggested to use a table within the application to store helpfile information in a rich text field and display it in a form activated by the help key F1. If the rtf file created in MS Word, saved as rtf and copied into the rtf field graphics and pictures that are part of the rtf are not displayed. Is there a solution? After all HTML which is thougt to be the basis for rtf accepts pictures.

Hi Bo,

As far as I know a rich text field in Access uses HTML code.

If you save a MS Word document as rtf-file, it is saved in RTF-format, that is different from HTML.

I have no experience with rich text fields (not available in my favorite Access2003), but do all my reporting by directly generating rtf-files.

What happens if you save the MS Word document as html-file, and use that in a rich text field?

Imb.

Answer 3

No, copy/paste of a png file does not do the job.

It's quite frustrating how MS keeps the developers on their toes. As soon as they learn to avoid the pitfalls of an application a new version appears with new bugs. It seems that for MS Access Help they have replaced the tool based on HTML 4.1 with something that is much less powerful, just because they are not able to protect IE from malicious software. And on top of it the outdated HTML approach still shows up first on their systems if you look for help.

Merry Xmas, boz

Answer 4

Hi boz,

Merry Christmas! Other options, if you're willing, is to use an Attachment field instead to attach the RTF or Word file. Or, use a Text field to store the filepath to the Word file.

Just my 2 cents...

Answer 5

I try to build a help file for a MS Access runtime version. After having started out with the HTML 4.1 approach I had to find out, that this does not function anymore as explained above. Next best lead from MS Help is referring to Microsoft
Knowledge Base: 209843 ACC2000: How to Programmatically Display a Help File. Coding and interoperability - as required - don't seem to be the problem. It is the shortcomings of "Rich Text Fields" not living up to a decent standard.

Answer 6

It's quite frustrating how MS keeps the developers on their toes. As soon as they learn to avoid the pitfalls of an application a new version appears with new bugs. It seems that for MS Access Help they have replaced the tool based on HTML 4.1 with something that is much less powerful, just because they are not able to protect IE from malicious software. And on top of it the outdated HTML approach still shows up first on their systems if you look for help.

Hi Bo,

I can understand your frustation.

Apart that I cannot use Rich Text because of my Access2003, I think I would never would use it.

I am more in favor of structured text in a database, and the Rich Text part (the cosmetics) is good for reporting. My reporting system is completely dynamic, generating an external (Word-readable) .rtf-file, that eventually can be converted to .pdf-file.

It saves me a lot of frustation.

Imb.