Copying TEXT from one row to another

[DavidJA]

Hey all, I'm sure the answer to this is obvious AND simple, but I just can't get it!

I have a row in a database that contains a varchar(50) column and a TEXT column. I want to copy the values of these two columns to another row, withing a stored procedure.

Keeping in mind that text can not be used as a local variable, how can I do this?

I've tried:

UPDATE tasks_tbl set tasks_tbl.copy = tblSourceTask.Copy,
tasks_tbl.Heading = tblSourceTask.Heading
FROM tasks_tbl, tasks_tbl as tblSourceTask
WHERE tasks_tbl.taskid = @destinationTaskID
AND tblSourceTask.TaskID = @sourceTaskID


...but I just can't get anyware!

 

[tlbroadbent]

Look up READTEXT, WRITETEXT, and other TEXT functions in SQL Server Books onliine. TEXT columns cannot be handled with simple SQL statements. Terry L. Broadbent - DBA
Computing Links:

http://tlbroadbent.home.attbi.com/prog.htm

faq183-874 contains "Suggestions for Getting Quick and Appropriate Answers" to your questions.

 

[DavidJA]

Thanks for that, but now I'm really confused!

From what I can tell, I need to call WriteText and pass the data argument as the result of ReadText, but because I can not create a local variable of type TEXT, I'm lost!

I've tried:
DECLARE @ptrSourceText varbinary(16)
DECLARE @ptrDestText varbinary(16)

SELECT @ptrSourceText = TEXTPTR(copy)
FROM tasks_tbl
WHERE taskNumber = 86285

SELECT @ptrDestText = TEXTPTR(copy)
FROM tasks_tbl
WHERE taskNumber = 86286
WriteText tasks_tbl.copy @ptrDestText READTEXT tasks_tbl.copy @ptrSourceText 0 0

but it does not work....