Leading and Trailing Spaces - ms-access

Question

I've come up with a bit of a weird situation. I have a string that was entered into a form from a webpage. I noticed that the string wasn't behaving as expected when I was trying to apply a filter.
The crux of the matter is depending on how I view the string it appears differently.
Form View - "523548"
Datasheet View - " 523548"
Raw Sql - " 523548"
Actually, when I view the datasheet value it appears as "523548 " but copies as " 523548".
Asc(Left(string),1) tells me the first character is Chr9 (Tab Key)
I am really stuck to find out why this is happening or more importantly, what I can do to correct it.
Thanks!
Dave.

Answer 1

I'd use the Trim() function here. Although the link is for Excel, it's the same syntax in Access.
Use this function when you write the value to the table, and you can use this function to clean up your current data as well. This should remove phantom tabs, as well as spaces.

Answer 2

Thanks for the tips. I found this function and added in a couple of items to suit my needs.
' Strip Illegal Characters
' http://www.utteraccess.com/wiki/index.php/Strip_Illegal_Characters
' Code courtesy of UtterAccess Wiki
' Licensed under Creative Commons License
' http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
'
' You are free to use this code in any application,
' provided this notice is left unchanged.
'
' rev date brief descripton
' 1.0 2010-10-23 Writing files to disk that contain illegal file characters can cause sometimes obscure error message(s)
'
Public Function fStripIllegal(strCheck As String, Optional strReplaceWith As String = "") As String
On Error GoTo StripIllErr
'illegal file name characters included in default string are ? [ ] / \ = + < > :; * " , '
Dim intI As Integer
Dim intPassedString As Integer
Dim intCheckString As Integer
Dim strChar As String
Dim strIllegalChars As String
Dim intReplaceLen As Integer
If IsNull(strCheck) Then Exit Function
strIllegalChars = "?[]/\=+<>:;,*" & Chr(34) & Chr(39) & Chr(32) & Chr(9) 'add/remove characters you need removed to this string
intPassedString = Len(strCheck)
intCheckString = Len(strIllegalChars)
intReplaceLen = Len(strReplaceWith)
If intReplaceLen > 0 Then 'a character has been entered to use as the replacement character
If intReplaceLen = 1 Then 'check the character itself isn't an illegal character
If InStr(strIllegalChars, strReplaceWith) > 0 Then
MsgBox "You can't replace an illegal character with another illegal character", _
vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "Invalid Character"
fStripIllegal = strCheck
Exit Function
End If
Else 'only one replacement character allowed
MsgBox "Only one character is allowed as a replacement character", _
vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "Invalid Replacement String"
fStripIllegal = strCheck
Exit Function
End If
End If
If intPassedString < intCheckString Then
For intI = 1 To intCheckString
strChar = Mid(strIllegalChars, intI, 1)
If InStr(strCheck, strChar) > 0 Then
strCheck = Replace(strCheck, strChar, strReplaceWith)
End If
Next intI
Else
For intI = 1 To intPassedString
strChar = Mid(strIllegalChars, intI, 1)
If InStr(strCheck, strChar) > 0 Then
strCheck = Replace(strCheck, strChar, strReplaceWith)
End If
Next intI
End If
fStripIllegal = Trim(strCheck)
StripIllErrExit:
Exit Function
StripIllErr:
MsgBox "The following error occured: " & err.Number & vbCrLf _
& err.Description, vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "Unexpected Error"
fStripIllegal = strCheck
Resume StripIllErrExit
End Function

Answer 3

Well, adjust your routine to not include the tab for new entries.
The old entries you can adjust with Replace:
NewValue = Replace([OldValue], Chr(9), "")