How to insert control characters in calculation field (FMP 6 Windows XP)?

I know this is basic, but a brief Google search didn't turn up anything
useful. I am doing SQL imports from Oracle into Filemaker 6. One of
the fields contains text with embedded line feeds. When I export this
information to a new FMP file, the line feeds result in new records. So
the solution is to substitute vertical tabs for the line feeds, right?

Well, I have no problem making this work on the Mac: simply open
Tex-Edit Plus, click the little A icon in the lower left hand corner,
and a nice ASCII chart pops up which allows me to copy the appropriate
control character to paste into the calculation in FMP 6.

However, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to get this to work
with FMP 6 on XP. I tried the "hold down ALT while typing 010 and 011"
from the numeric keypad keypad and that doesn't work. I tried
generating the character in Word and then copying and pasting into
Filemaker and that doesn't work. And no control characters are
displayed on the XP Character Map System tool - just text characters.

Surely I am missing something simple.

Bill

Re: How to insert control characters in calculation field (FMP 6 Windows XP)?

For filemaker a TAB in a text-field is entered as CTRL-TAB.


"William Maslin" schreef in bericht
news:CATmaslin-99114A.10530308112007@nntp.msstate.edu...
>I know this is basic, but a brief Google search didn't turn up anything
> useful. I am doing SQL imports from Oracle into Filemaker 6. One of
> the fields contains text with embedded line feeds. When I export this
> information to a new FMP file, the line feeds result in new records. So
> the solution is to substitute vertical tabs for the line feeds, right?
>
> Well, I have no problem making this work on the Mac: simply open
> Tex-Edit Plus, click the little A icon in the lower left hand corner,
> and a nice ASCII chart pops up which allows me to copy the appropriate
> control character to paste into the calculation in FMP 6.
>
> However, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to get this to work
> with FMP 6 on XP. I tried the "hold down ALT while typing 010 and 011"
> from the numeric keypad keypad and that doesn't work. I tried
> generating the character in Word and then copying and pasting into
> Filemaker and that doesn't work. And no control characters are
> displayed on the XP Character Map System tool - just text characters.
>
> Surely I am missing something simple.
>
> Bill

Re: How to insert control characters in calculation field (FMP 6 Windows XP)?

In article <47334509$0$43289$dbd4f001@news.wanadoo.nl>, "Ursus"
wrote:
> "William Maslin" schreef in bericht
> news:CATmaslin-99114A.10530308112007@nntp.msstate.edu...
> >
> > I know this is basic, but a brief Google search didn't turn up anything
> > useful. I am doing SQL imports from Oracle into Filemaker 6. One of
> > the fields contains text with embedded line feeds. When I export this
> > information to a new FMP file, the line feeds result in new records. So
> > the solution is to substitute vertical tabs for the line feeds, right?
> >
> > Well, I have no problem making this work on the Mac: simply open
> > Tex-Edit Plus, click the little A icon in the lower left hand corner,
> > and a nice ASCII chart pops up which allows me to copy the appropriate
> > control character to paste into the calculation in FMP 6.
> >
> > However, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to get this to work
> > with FMP 6 on XP. I tried the "hold down ALT while typing 010 and 011"
> > from the numeric keypad keypad and that doesn't work. I tried
> > generating the character in Word and then copying and pasting into
> > Filemaker and that doesn't work. And no control characters are
> > displayed on the XP Character Map System tool - just text characters.
> >
> > Surely I am missing something simple.
>
> For filemaker a TAB in a text-field is entered as CTRL-TAB.

Unfortunately a normal Tab is not the same as a Vertical Tab, plus you
would need to type this into either Oracle or a text processor rather
than FileMaker.

You could try combinations of Alt, Control, Enter and keypad Enter, but
I've no idea if that will find the correct character.

Another problem is how you know the difference between an unwanted line
feed and a 'end of record' line feed, but presumably you already know
this. Therefore it should be possible to use one of the many text
manipulators (eg. Grep, GSAR, and others) to automate the process in
the exported file before importing into FileMaker.


Another way would be to use something else instead of the vertical tab.
You could use something unique that doesn't appear in your data (eg.
"/**/") put that into the export file and import into FileMaker, and
then have FileMaker re-replace the "/**/" with a carriage return.


Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

Re: How to insert control characters in calculation field (FMP 6 Windows XP)?

In article <091120070858492822%helpful_harry@nom.de.plume.com>,
Helpful Harry wrote:

> In article <47334509$0$43289$dbd4f001@news.wanadoo.nl>, "Ursus"
> wrote:
> > "William Maslin" schreef in bericht
> > news:CATmaslin-99114A.10530308112007@nntp.msstate.edu...
> > >
> > > I know this is basic, but a brief Google search didn't turn up anything
> > > useful. I am doing SQL imports from Oracle into Filemaker 6. One of
> > > the fields contains text with embedded line feeds. When I export this
> > > information to a new FMP file, the line feeds result in new records. So
> > > the solution is to substitute vertical tabs for the line feeds, right?
> > >
> > > Well, I have no problem making this work on the Mac: simply open
> > > Tex-Edit Plus, click the little A icon in the lower left hand corner,
> > > and a nice ASCII chart pops up which allows me to copy the appropriate
> > > control character to paste into the calculation in FMP 6.
> > >
> > > However, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to get this to work
> > > with FMP 6 on XP. I tried the "hold down ALT while typing 010 and 011"
> > > from the numeric keypad keypad and that doesn't work. I tried
> > > generating the character in Word and then copying and pasting into
> > > Filemaker and that doesn't work. And no control characters are
> > > displayed on the XP Character Map System tool - just text characters.
> > >
> > > Surely I am missing something simple.
>
> Another way would be to use something else instead of the vertical tab.
> You could use something unique that doesn't appear in your data (eg.
> "/**/") put that into the export file and import into FileMaker, and
> then have FileMaker re-replace the "/**/" with a carriage return.


Good idea, Harry. However, I just transferred the Mac version of the
file to the PC, opened it and then opened Define Fields and copied the
calculation and then pasted it into the same field definition in the PC
version and it works! This is certainly not very convenient but it did
work. It seems odd that Microsoft wouldn't include control characters
in XP's built-in Character Map System tool. I wonder why MS makes it so
hard to do something simple? Well, even Apple will throw a few
roadblocks in there, too - like dropping phone dialing when they went
from OS9 to OS X.

Bill