How can I create a condensed version of text field on a report or form?

Knowledge Base

Our Knowledge Base covers a wide variety of technical topics, from the basic to the complex.

In order to show a portion of a particular field's data on a report and/or form, you need to take these two steps:

1) Create a new formula field that will hold the subset of the original field's data, and

2) Add the new formula field to the forms and reports where you want the condensed field showing.

To create the formula field that truncates a text field, you will want to use one of the three formula functions: Left(), Right() and/or Part(). Here are some examples of what could be in the formula for the new field:

1) "Left([LongField], 228)" will display the first 228 charachers of "LongField".

2) "Right([LongField], 1000)" will display the last 1000 characters of "LongField".

3) "Part([LongField],2,":")" displays everything between the 2nd and 3rd colon.

For more examples text functions available to you, see the following view in the "QuickBase Formula Functions" QuickBase:

https://www.quickbase.com/db/6ewwzuuj?a=q&qid=8.

Tags:

33941 reads

Comments

an update from a friendly user!

Submitted by qb_support_phil (not verified) on Tue, 12/08/2009 - 16:01.

Using the following formula, as opposed to the ones offered in the article, will give you results with no truncated words and and elipsis (...) if there is additional data beyond the snip-it.

If(Length([LongField])<301, [LongField], NotRight(Left([LongField], 300)," ")&"...")

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

Input format

Filtered HTML

Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Allowed HTML tags: <a> <p> <hr> <br> <br /> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <table> <tr> <td> <em> <b> <u> <i> <strong> <font> <del> <ins> <sub> <sup> <quote> <blockquote> <pre> <address> <code> <cite> <embed> <object> <param> <strike> <caption> <img> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4>
You can enable syntax highlighting of source code with the following tags: <code>, <blockcode>, <c>, <cpp>, <drupal5>, <drupal6>, <java>, <javascript>, <php>, <python>, <ruby>, <xml>. The supported tag styles are: <foo>, [foo].
Images can be added to this post.

Plain Text

Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>

More information about formatting options

Word verification: * Type the characters you see in this picture.

(verify using audio)

Type the characters you see in the picture above; if you can't read them, submit the form and a new image will be generated. Not case sensitive.

Knowledge Base