Email Addresses misbehaving

[MBAYES]

Hi
I'm using Goldmine 6.7 on SQL. We're having problems with some email addresses that are getting extra characters within them, for example an email address might look like this, <<name@company. co.uk>>, or like this, <<name@company.co.uk o.uk>>, even if you delete the spaces/extra characters they just reappear. I can't see these extra characters when I look directly at the table on the SQL Server. Deleting the email address and then recreating has no effect, the problem just reappears. I've tried deleting, closing down, recreating, typing the address in another application (Word) and copying it in, just retyping - nothing seems to work, I'd really love someone to come up with a solution. Thanks

 

[goner]

Have you made any modifications to the contsupp table yourself? How long ago did you upgrade to 6.7? Is your datadict.DBF up-to-date (it can be found in the root folder of GoldMine and should probably have a October 2005 date on it.

Doug Castell
Castell Computers
(310)601-4738

http://www.castellcomputers.com

 

[MBAYES]

We haven't modified the table
We upgraded 3 weeks ago (although we did have this problem previously)
Datadict.dbf has an October 2004 date.

 

[goner]

sorry, you're right, Oct 2004 is correct.

Interesting problem. There are some things to be aware of with the storage of the e-mail address field. For one thing, it's not just stored in the contsupref field. It bleeds over into the address1 field if the e-mail address is too long for the contsupref field. Now, your examples don't look anywhere near too-long, however, they're just examples, so you'll have to examine the data.

Here's a query that can help.

select contact1.company, contsupp.contsupref, contsupp.address1 from contact1,contsupp where
contact1.accountno=contsupp.accountno and upper(contsupp.contact) like
'E-MAIL%' and contsupref <>''

Also, this:
select * from "d:\goldmine\datadict.dbf" where dbfname="CONTSUPP"

Note that you will probably want to modify the path to the datadict.dbf, as appropriate. Note the lengths specified in the datadict for your contsupref and address1 fields, specifically, and compare them against what you have in your live contsupp table in SQL. Does it match?

Doug Castell
Castell Computers
(310)601-4738

http://www.castellcomputers.com

 

[MBAYES]

Hi Doug
The first query was great, it's shown me all the records that I have a problem with. The second query shows that although Address 1 field lengths are the same, the contsupref has a field length of 35, but 75 in the SQL table.
Do you now know how I can fix the 'broken' records and, if possible, ensure it doesn't happen again?

 

[goner]

that's a rather complicated question...

The first thing to figure out is why your contsupref field has been modified and put it back to how it is supposed to be.

The second task would be to fix the esisting records. The way this is accomplished depends greatly on a number of variables such as: do you sync? do you own goldbox? are all the records messed up in the same way? etc. etc.

It might be a good time to call in a pro.

Doug Castell
Castell Computers
(310)601-4738

http://www.castellcomputers.com

 

[MBAYES]

Hi

I took a backup of CONTSUPP table, modified the field size back to 35 on the SQL table. Voile - it's worked. Although the odd characters are still in the Address1 field, they now do not display on the email address and all seems okay. Thanks for all your help, saved us a huge amount of time and it appears we don't need to try to 'fix' the records.

 

[goner]

Excellent!

Doug Castell
Castell Computers
(310)601-4738

http://www.castellcomputers.com