Export to RTF truncating text

Question

I have an Access 2007 front end (SQL Server 2008 R2 back end) database application which runs a report containing addresses. This is then regularly sent to Word as an RTF document. On some machines the text box fields containing the address are truncated during the export, perhaps missing out the last line.

We thought it might be an upgrade either to Access or the Windows operating system, however testing doesn't bear that out. Currently none of our Windows 7 machines succeed in the export and I am now testing the report across two XP machines: both running Access 2007 (SP3), both logged on with the same domain username with the same access to printers etc. Still one works, the other fails.

The text boxes (and Detail section) all have Can Grow set to Yes and I've experimented with changing it to Rich Text/Plain Text etc. without success.

What else drives the export process? Are there any other Windows components or Office Tools that need to be checked or upgraded?

Answer 1

I'm fighting with the same problems.

Increasing the size of the field does not help really, as sometimes in the same report the longer text is quoted completely, while the shorter one is truncated. The error is reproducable, but the source of it is not clear.

Recently I have found, that the output to PDF file-format seems to be correct, which is unfortunately available only in Office2007 and higher.

Other shortage is, that the PDF cannot be further modified in MSWord, which means, the output can't be used, as an input form.

Answer 2

Hi Jack

Thanks for spelling it out - I had a suspicion that Export to RTF wasn't a 360° function that covered all possibilities and it's good to focus on that particular property. It still bugs me that two machines that appear identical have different (but consistent) outcomes.

Thanks again.

Chris

Answer 3

In doing a little research, exporting to RTF has been an issue since Access 97. 

Basically, it appears the export cannot handle the Can Grow property.  Try setting the control size large enough to always show all the data.