select cast help needed

What is the correct syntax for querying the first 20 characters of a
memo field?

I'm trying to
SELECT CAST (varchar(20) fieldname) as newfieldname
and i get a bunch of errors

Can someone please help me?

MS Access DB used with ColdFusion

Thanks

I don't have access installed but, I think you can just use the left
function...

SELECT left(fieldName, 20) as newFieldName

Thank you.
That works for one field. What if I wanted to get the first 20
characters from multiple fields? I'm trying to display the first few
lines of few articles. Each article has its own field in the db. Any ideas?


KenJ  wrote:
> I don't have access installed but, I think you can just use the left
> function...
>
> SELECT left(fieldName, 20) as newFieldName
>

On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:39:45 -0500, T.M. wrote:

>What is the correct syntax for querying the first 20 characters of a
>memo field?
>
>I'm trying to
>SELECT CAST (varchar(20) fieldname) as newfieldname
>and i get a bunch of errors
>
>Can someone please help me?
>
>MS Access DB used with ColdFusion
>
>Thanks

Hi T.M.,

For Access help, you might want to post to an Access group. This group
is for SQL Server. :-)

In SQL Server, you'd use

SELECT CAST(fieldname AS varchar(20)) AS newfieldname FROM tablename

I have no idea how well that would port to Access.

--
Hugo Kornelis, SQL Server MVP

T.M.  (iamcarterwells@yaho
o.com)  writes:
> Thank you.
> That works for one field. What if I wanted to get the first 20
> characters from multiple fields? I'm trying to display the first few
> lines of few articles. Each article has its own field in the db. Any
> ideas?

comp.databases.ms-access


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...oads/books.mspx
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