MS Access query to separate commas - html

Question

my project contains a MS Acces 2003 database, The table in the database contains a column called students name. The single column contains n numbers of names of student. For eg. John, Jim, Johny, Tom etc. They are dynamically added. Now what I want is, I want a complete list of all the names in the column.
Like for eg. if the column is
Student_name
John, Jim, Johny, Tom, Jack
I want output as:
Student_name
John
Jim
Johny
Tom
Jack
The query must support MS Access. as i'm fetching the data in html file and I've attached that html file to MS Aacess database

Answer 1

Sorry, but MS Access doesn't provide functionality to run query in recursive mode as CTE does. It's possible to use VBA macro to proceed through the collection of students to split comma separated values into set of records ;)
Let say, you have got table Student with fields:
ID (numeric - integer),
Students (string - char)
Sample data:
Id Students
1 John, Jim, Johny, Tom, Jack
2 Paula, Robert, Tim, Dorothy
5 Frank, Ramona, Giorgio, Teresa, Barbara
19 Isabell, Eve, Ewelina, Tadit
You need to create another table to store results of macro.
CREATE TABLE CTE1
(
ID INT,
OrigValue CHAR(255),
SingleValue CHAR(255),
Remainder CHAR(255)
);
To add macro, please do the following steps:
go to Visual Basic code Pane
insert new module
copy below code and paste it into previously added module
move the mouse cursor into **ModifyMyData** procedure by clicking whenever inside its body
run code (F5)
Option Compare Database
Option Explicit
'need reference to Microsoft ActiveX Data Object 2.8 Library
Sub ModifyMyData()
Dim sSQL As String
Dim rst As ADODB.Recordset
Dim vArray As Variant
Dim i As Integer
'clear CTE table
sSQL = "DELETE * FROM CTE;"
CurrentDb.Execute sSQL
'initial query
sSQL = "INSERT INTO CTE (ID, OrigValue, SingleValue, Remainder)" & vbCr & _
"SELECT ID, Students AS OrigValue, TRIM(LEFT(Students, InStr(1,Students,',')-1)) AS SingleValue, " & _
"TRIM(RIGHT(Students,LEN(Students)-InStr(1,Students,','))) AS Remainder" & vbCr & _
"FROM Student;"
CurrentDb.Execute sSQL
sSQL = "SELECT ID, OrigValue, SingleValue, Remainder" & vbCr & _
"FROM CTE"
Set rst = New ADODB.Recordset
rst.Open sSQL, CurrentProject.Connection, adOpenStatic
With rst
'fill rst object
.MoveLast
.MoveFirst
'proccess through the
Do While Not rst.EOF
'Split Remainder into array
vArray = Split(.Fields("Remainder"), ",")
'add every single value
For i = LBound(vArray) To UBound(vArray)
sSQL = "INSERT INTO CTE (ID, OrigValue, SingleValue, Remainder)" & vbCr & _
"VALUES(" & .Fields("ID") & ", '" & .Fields("OrigValue") & "','" & vArray(i) & "','" & GetRemainder(vArray, i + 1) & "');"
CurrentDb.Execute sSQL
Next
.MoveNext
Loop
.Close
End With
Set rst = Nothing
MsgBox "Ready!"
DoCmd.OpenTable "CTE"
End Sub
Function GetRemainder(vList As Variant, startpos As Integer) As String
Dim i As Integer, sTmp As String
For i = startpos To UBound(vList)
sTmp = sTmp & vList(i) & ","
Next
If Len(sTmp) > 0 Then sTmp = Left(sTmp, Len(sTmp) - 1)
GetRemainder = sTmp
End Function