[AccessD] Highlighting Select Words in a Large Text Field

Arthur Fuller fuller.artful at gmail.com
Sun Sep 30 15:44:24 CDT 2012


Brad,

How do you know which words to highlight? If you know them in advance, why
not store all the HTML directly in the memo field, rather than just the
text?

Arthur

-----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Brad Marks
> Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2012 11:40 AM
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
> Subject: [AccessD] Highlighting Select Words in a Large Text Field
>
> All,
>
> Ever since I became a member of the AccessD forum a couple years ago, I
> have
> asked many questions and received a ton of great ideas and solutions.  I am
> grateful for this help.  However, as a relative newcomer, I have not been
> able to contribute very much that others might find useful.  I share the
> following example with the idea that others may benefit from some work that
> I did over the weekend.
>
> The small firm where I work has a purchased manufacturing system.  I have
> built an inquiry system using Access 2007 with ODBC access to the
> manufacturing system database. This works very nicely.  Recently, our users
> requested a new inquiry that would allow them to search for records that
> contain select words that are found in a large text field.
>
> This was easy to accomplish with a little VBA code that changes the SQL
> based on the word or words that the users specify.  This works fine, except
> that the resulting data on an Access report is simply displayed as one big
> chuck (over 1,000 bytes).  I needed to find a way to highlight select
> words.
>
>
> In the purchased manufacturing system database, the field in question is
> defined as a memo field.  I did some research to see if it was possible to
> highlight select words when displaying a memo field, but could not find a
> quick solution.
>
> Here is what I came up with over the weekend.
>
> I use VBA code to change the SQL based on the string that the users
> request.
> The select records are available via a Record Set.
>
> I then wrote a little VBA code that adds HTML tags as needed to create an
> HTML file and to highlight the requested words in bold red.
>
> When all of the records in the Record Set are processed, the VBA code
> initiates Internet Explorer to display the generated HTML file.
>
> This approach did not take a lot of time to build and it seems to work
> nicely.
>
> I showed what I had built to my wife and she did not seem to be impressed.
> I showed it to one of our three children and he was not impressed either.
>  I
> showed it to the family dog and he also was not impressed.  I am starting
> to
> feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of the database realm.  I plan to show the
> final results to the users tomorrow (Monday).
>
> Anyway, I thought that I would share this concept and perhaps someone else
> would benefit.
>
> Brad
>
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