how to suppress blank rtf field

[brendanchris]

Hi all

I have an rtf memo field coming across into a crystal report.I have turned on the rtf interpretation and the field displays just fine.

The dilemma is however that I wish to suppress the field if the rtf interpreted display is blank. When I turn on suppress if blank as I normally do, it doesn't suppress the field, I assume because in the actual field in the table, there is still rtf code sitting there. So what I want to try and do is suppress if the result of the rtf interpretation is blank. At the moment it leaves a whole lot of blank lines through the report.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.


Cheers

Brendan

 

[lbass]

Is the rtf coding standard throughout? If there is a constant number of codes, you could use a suppression formula like:

len({table.field}) = 7 //or whatever the constant result is

Or, if it varies, but if there is a standard way of extracting the text from the codes, you could use that to design a suppression formula.

-LB

 

[brendanchris]

Hi lbass.

Thanks for you comments. I had thought that may be a way around it, but is is difficult to see a standrard paatern in the rtf code for those with text data and those without. Here are some examples:

With text:
EXAMPLE 1
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss MS Sans Serif;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs17 Still wine.
\par }

EXAMPLE 2
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss\fprq2\fcharset0 Verdana;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang3081\f0\fs15 Entries in this class should be inspired by form. Artistic content depends on creating and raising awareness of form rather than a lifelike representation.
\par }

EXAMPLE 3
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 MS Sans Serif;}{\f1\fswiss MS Sans Serif;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang3081\f0\fs17 Charolais, Murray Grey and Hereford Bulls\lang1033\f1
\par }

Here is an example of one without text:
EXAMPLE 1
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 MS Sans Serif;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs17
\par }


I thought maybe doing some sort of suppression formula that says if the field contains "\fs??" followed by a space and then something other than "\par }" then don't suppress.

I tried this using:
lookslike({qryClassBC.DescriptionRTF},"*\fs?? \par }") to try and return a true or false but I must have somtheing wrong as it is returning all trues for the examples above.


Any ideas on what sort of formula might work here would be much appreciated.


Cheers

Brendan