Hi I've been given a data extract from MS Access 97, which has a memo field in rtf. My problem is that this field is encrypted to a certain degree. Apparently there is a function in MS Access 97, an rtf box in the form that may allow me to convert this field to plain text format. I need to do this quickly as it's someone elses computer running 97 office and I can't disrupt them. Has anyone heard of anything along these lines?

Any help would be much appreciated,

Thank you,

Regards,

broni108

Welcome to UtterAccess!

RTF is not really "encoded", it's all just text. However, it combines the content along with formatting codes, so displayed in a program that can process the formatting, you get formatted text.

MS Word and MS Write can both display formatted RTF. Viewed natively in a table (or in a simple text editor such as Notepad), it will be somewhat difficult to read, as the formatting is mixed together with the content. It is similar in many ways to viewing raw HTML code.

Access has a control that can be used on a form to display (and edit) RTF text, which is likely what the application running on that other computer used to populate this field. It doesn't CONVERT it, it just DISPLAYS it -- formatted. The data in the memo field in the table will remain as you see it.

You can find some more details on the RTF specification here .

AFAIK ... A97 does not have a NATIVE control to display RTF ... A2007 now does, but in earlier versions, I though you needed a 3rd party ActiveX or something like that ....

Anyway ... Click Here for a thread that should be able to help you out!