Greetings all,

A client is receiving a strange error with a Formatted Memo field "Error
writing file - record not tagged". This also causes a long delay in my app
trying to get the value - sometimes over 5 minutes, which causes the client
to think it is locked & they restart the app (very bad!).

The workaround is to wipe out this problem value, which fixes the problem
for the one record.

I'm writing a generalized script to fix every value. The script copies every
value to a memo variable then to a backup table, & sets the production value
to blank. The table will then be closed, giving an 'empty' MB file. A second
pass on the table then reverses this to restore all the values.

My question is, will the 'corrupted' value survive being copied to/from the
backup, or will it 'fix' itself (and/or become blank)? I'm hoping for the
'fix' option. The MB files are a mystery to me, so I don't know if the corruption
is in -how- the value is stored or is inherent in the value itself.

Looking at Bertil's buglist, this only shows an Sql problem, which we don't
use. Also, there isn't an opportunity to redesign this without formatted
memos, so I'd rather not have that discussion here.

TIA,
Jim Moseley

Jim Moseley wrote:

You talk about 'problem value' but don't identify what the value is - that
might be helpful to know.

Is the table damaged once the value has been assigned to the field? That may
be the answer to whether copying the data out and then back in will scrub the
data. Probably only way to tell is to try it.

Is this only happening on that one system? Can you reproduce it at your location?

Can't say that I understand what you are even dealing with, so no way I can
make a suggestion of any type.

--
---------------
Tony McGuire
http://www.lostlore.com

unfortunately, there's no way to know.. you're better off killing that one
and/or replacing it..

--

Steven Green - Myrtle Beach, South Carolina USA

http://www.OasisTradingPost.com

Oasis Trading Post
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"Jim Moseley" <jmose (AT) mapson (DOT) attglobal.net> wrote

If the formatting is important, you may be in trouble...

I've never been able to fix a memo field without exporting the table to text
and re-importing. This means removing all hard returns from memo fields
and losing any formatting in formatted memo fields. Of course, I've only
ever had this happen once. ChimneySweep wouldn't fix it; table repair wouldn't
fix it; making a new table and moving data (with query, table add, script)
wouldn't fix it. Only making a new table and importing the data from a text
file would fix it.

That said, I never saw the error message you report, so maybe it's something
other than corruption (or a different kind of corruption).

Maybe others have alternatives.

Liz


"Jim Moseley" <jmose (AT) mapson (DOT) attglobal.net> wrote:

Tony,

That's just it - once the field's value is corrupted, Pdox won't tell me
what it was. I can only tell it was corrupted by the long delay in getting
the value, and the error message.


Table Repair shows the table is fine, no corruption.


It has now happened at 3 different clients over the last year (that I know
of, out of ~1000 total). I can't reproduce it because I'm not sure what
is causing it in the first place.

So, my current goal is to just try to fix all values & see if that helps.
The latest client with the problem has started 'locking up' a couple of
times a day, so after my fix it should be quickly apparent if it had any
effect.

Thanks,
Jim Moseley

"record not tagged". Is that something you output from your application?
I've never seen that message from pdox. Course I've never used formatted
memos either.

On 5 Mar 2009 10:50:34 -0500, Jim Moseley wrote:

Get Chimney Sweep. Tutility is reknowned for missing some corruption.

--
Steve

On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:31:29 -0500, Jim Giner wrote:

That's what struck me. Formatted memos are rtf internally, where each
paragraph is (must be?) surrounded by start tags and end tags. Maybe a
paragraph lacks its start tags or end tags. That at least makes sense of
the error message.

--
Jim Hargan

Jim Hargan wrote:
And my question is whether the data in these memo fields, or some of it, is
from copy/paste from Internet pages or other applications.

A LOT of garbage, that the user can't see, is captured along with text when
doing copy/paste of text from Internet pages.

--
---------------
Tony McGuire
http://www.lostlore.com

Tony,


Good guess. One of the biggest uses of the formatted memo fields built into
the app is to grab directions from web pages, although I extract the raw
html instead of cut/paste. Can't guarantee that the users don't do it manually,
though.

I've started working with Rodney's RTF-to-HTML converter, since I'm not fluent
in RTF. Hopefully that will point to problems.

Thanks,
Jim Moseley