This is just great....

[amkazen]

Hi, I was just reading the post titled "query results return incomplete text"
from Nov 2004. I spent all day long yesterday (over 6 hours) pulling my hair
out because I could not import a description field in its entirety from an
Excel spreadsheet. How did I know I was not getting the entire descritpion?
A lot of the records have more than 255 characters in the description and
when I ran a query using the "len" function all it would return was 255
characters which told me my data had been truncated during the import. I
even had Ken and Joe, MVPs on this Discussion group, helping me to no avail.
I finally split my Excel spreadsheet into 3 different spreadsheets, and split
the description field into 9 description fields using the Excel functions of
"left" and "mid" with each field being less than 255 characters. Now, I
discover this fun fact about truncation with group by and union.

Can anyone explain to me why this occurs? Can anyone tellme why i could not
find this info in Help, Knowledge Base, or in the newsgroups when searching?
I used the term truncation and truncating to search. I did not search in the
queries disccusion group because I believed my problem was in importing,not
the query. Bottom line, is I felt like an absolute idiot when what I told my
coworkers would take 5 minutes took 6 hours, and now I find out I may have
done it in 5 minutes but did not realize it because I failed to visually
check my table and relied on a query using the "len" function!

Andrew

 

[Ken Snell [MVP]]

amkazen -

Your original thread with Joe and me never mentioned anything about using a
GROUP BY or a UNION query as part of the process. Had you posted the query
(as was requested), we might then have seen the problem that you noted.

Try this Google search... you'll get hundreds of newsgroup posts about this
issue:
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=access+query+memo+field+truncation

 

[amkazen]

Hi,

I hope you are not thinking I was blaming you for my problem, lack of a
solution, etc., because you are not the cause. I really appreciate the help
I received and and that others get because often I find an answer to a
question I have. It just did not happen for me yesterday due to me getting
frustrated. It had to be because it was a Monday and the first workday of
Daylight Savings Time (which has outlived its usefulness and necessity on my
part!).

I just reread the original postings from yesterday and did not see a request
for a query anywhere until the posts you wrote an hour or so ago. I see
where I mentioned I was using a query but did not see a request for me to
send it to you.

I did not use Google to search this isse. I just did another search using
the discussion group search function and guess what? I found the issue of
truncation in
a query using group and union.

So, sheer panic and frustration was blinding me, and I could not see my way
out of it. It was a co-worker who suggested the simple solution of splitting
the description into multiple descriptions that were less than 255 characters
in length and remerging them.

Thanks again!

Andrew

 

[Ken Snell [MVP]]

I fully understand frustration and how it impacts our comments. Yes, I had
asked for the query in the last exchange because you mentioned that the
query was giving you a different result from the table's actual contents.
That was the first indication in that thread that a query may have been the
problem -- we who answer posts get to be pretty good at "guessing" about
what is not said, but we cannot see the database nor what you did, so we
don't always guess with great intuition.

You'll find that most responders here will be quite patient and will work
through even very long threads, so long as we feel that the OP is working
with us and being forthcoming about the information. Frustration will be
present on both sides, so it's best, when feeling that way, to step away
from the computer for a bit and then come back to continue posting.

Good luck.