How to handle weird characters in form fields (like bullet points from Word docs)

hi there
lots of my users copy and paste from MS Word documents into a
text area
my app takes that form.textarea data and inserts it in a
MYSQL db.
when we output that cell from the db, we often find there are
? [question marks] where there once were special characters in the
Word doc text.
it seems that bullet points in word docs are the worst
offenders.
each time i spot a new one i try to find out the chr() number
for it and make a substitiution before the text is stored in the
db, but its a bit hit and miss (relies on me spotting it) and its v
time consuming
ive tried using functions safetext and demoronize - but they
dont seem to do what i need
im sure im not the first person to run into this - any
suggestions anyone?
thanks very much indeed for any help you can give.
kind regards
Nick

Thanks Paul and Azadi
Paul - when you say "change it to unicode" do you mean the
page or a setting in the db? forgive me if i'm being stupid but
this is all new territory to me. Thank you ever so much for your
help - does sound logical what you say :)
Azadi - thanks very much for this (I'm pressuming that
there's a charge for this udf) so i'll try to implement Paul's
solution and if I can't do that I'll buy the the udf - thanks very
much indeed for your help, really is much apprecaited.
kind regards
Nick

Similar Messages

How to make Acrobat Pro 7 form fields same size

I can manually enter form fields in my version of Acrobat Pro 7 but I have to hand draw them. is there a good way to make them all the same height? I know that if I copy the form field that I draw, it will link itself to whatever form field I copied it from.
TIA

The best way is to copy & paste the fields, and then rename them so that
they are no longer "linked".
If you have many such fields to rename, you might want to consider this
tool, developed by me:
http://try67.blogspot.com/2010/10/acrobat-convert-duplicated-fields-to.html

How to handle the master data when we are loading the from multiple clients

Hi,
We are loading HR data from two different clients 101 and 102 of same source system.
Here we are facing the problem with msater data maintenance for employee in BW, whose employee numbers are same.
For example client 101 employee range is 10001 to 10100.
In client 102 also same employee range.Then how to handle the above scenario
Is there any solutions apart from compounding of infoobjets with logical system.
Thanks in advance for your sugessions.
Thanks.
Maria.

Hi ,
you can create copy of 0EMPLOYEE Object.
Load one client master data to the copied object.
Example:
1. Create ZEMPLOYEE copy of 0EMPLOYEE.
2. create the transformation or rules
3. You have to follow same for remaining objects
regards,
HREDDY

Special characters pasted from Word doc not rendering in Adobe Reader

We have recuiters who have copy/pasted special characters from MS-Word into a new eRecruiting requisition (the text contained square bullets from a bulleted list). When pasted into the requsition, the Adobe pdf displays those characters as "-,," to the recruiter. When end users then display the PDF, the results are inconsistent. Some desktops render the text without displaying bullets, and others show an Adobe Reader popup: "The Japanese Language Support Package is required to display this page properly".
I am wondering what device settings are causing these differences and if there is a solution to display the special characters.
Thank you.

Hello Tim,
to make things short, although this is probably not very satisfying, you should prevent all your end users from copying text from word into an e-recruting application. Word contains tons of non-printable characters and as SAP uses completly other code-pages than windows everything can happen when these characters are loaded into sap.
Be aware that this is not only effecting the formating. It took me 2 weeks last year to find out that a single posting was not found in the job search as one of the "spaces" in a posting text was in real a special character which made the TREX abort indexing on this publication documents.
If you like bullet point lists in your publications there are ways to work with escape characters, we usally use the # character. So the recruiter types flow text and if he likes bullet points he just starts his paragraphs with # and then the publication transforms them automatically into bullet points. If you are quite familiar with smartforms adding this takes perhaps a day. If you want I can link some customer publication example and add some guidance how to build this.
Best Regards
Roman

How to see the keyboard shortcuts in pages like " alt " function in word?

how to see the keyboard shortcuts in pages like " alt " function in word?

luisandre wrote:
In word , if you press "alt" show you all the options you have . Appear numbers or letters in each options of the toolbar. So is more easy to work with the keyboard. How do you do this in pages?
Go to system preferences/language & text/input sources and check the box for Keyboard Viewer. Then select Keyboard Viewer from the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen. It will show all the special characters you can make when you press the alt and alt + shift keys.

How do I go about to convert a PDF file to a Word Doc?

How do I go about to convert a PDF file to a Word Doc?

Hi Anita,
You may want to consider subscribing to our ExportPDF service. You can learn more here: https://www.acrobat.com/exportpdf/en/home.html
-David

I'm a new Mac user....how can i create a "sticky" with automatically reoccurring bullet points?

I'm a new Mac user....how can i create a "sticky" with automatically reoccurring bullet points?

On my previous Mac (long, sad story) I had Office for Mac and liked it a lot. I was collaberating on some fairly complex legal documents, and never noticed any compatibility problems with Windows Office. That said, it is expensive. For most documents, I simply open the Word document in Pages and export it to Word when I am finished. I sometimes get the message that there is a missing font, but the computer uses a substitute that is quite acceptable. I have never had someone say that they had difficulty with a document I exported to Word.
Numbers and Excel aren't as compatible in my experience, and I have gotten some surprises when I hadn't tweaked the settings properly when exporting to Excel.
The other component of iWork is Keynote, and I like it much better than Powerpoint; to me it is just easier to use. I have never tried converting back and forth between Keynote and Powerpoint.
Depending on what grade your kids are in and what they are doing, I think I would start off with iWork and see what, if any, problems they encounter. Of course, if they are going to use the computer for a class in Office or its components, your kids are going to need a Windows machine with Windows Office, because Office for Mac is enough different that when the teacher says, "Now, move your mouse here and click on....", your kids are going to be lost.
Hope this is useful.

How to handle special characters in NWDI

Dear All
I am trying to update the Description from JSP form. Through JCO we are calling the RFC of ABAP. We are passing these description from Java to RFC of ABAP and this RFC update the text in Database.
We have noticed that if there is some special character in description like as : or , complete description is not getting updated in to the SAP database.
Can anyone help me how to handle these special characters in Java. There may be N number of special characters. We want to generalize it. We want to replace these characters by s and z respectively.
For example : We want to update this description.
APPLERR H'4301 H'FA03 H'254C na Zagreb TC4 rijeen je cleaning procedurom, te je i kroz CSR odgovoreno da trap korekcija N01TCADG-0052 u bloku UPDC vie nije potrebna, te se moe izbaciti (AP143).
Uspjeno su zavrene HR17/CN-A3 FOA-e na tranzitnom nivou, te slijedi roll-out u dva termina 12/13.04 i 19/20.04. ETK je na sastanku isporučio SW, te ALEX i mini PLEX za sve objekte.
AP147. Poslati finalnu dokumentaciju za uvođenje paketa (implementacijsku instrukciju i sve popratne datoteke).
WHile updated text is as follows :
APPLERR H'4301 H'FA03 H'254C na Zagreb TC4 rije
N01TCADG-0052 u bloku UPDC vi
Uspje
sastanku isporu
AP147. Poslati finalnu dokumentaciju za uvo
Regards
Bhavishya

Hi Bhavishya,
Apparently your SAP database isn't configured to support Unicode. That would be the first solution to your problem, but I can imagine it's a bit drastic to convert your DB.
A second solution would be to encode the input description to ASCII before storing it in the database. When reading from the database, decode again to Unicode. This way, no information is lost. A suitable encoding would be Base64. e.g.
String description = "unday ebra";
String descriptionBase64 = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(
description.getBytes("UTF-8")); // ""
// store descriptionBase64 in the DB
// later, when reading descriptionBase64 from the DB
String description2 = new String(
new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(descriptionBase64), "UTF-8");
Instead of using Sun's implementation, a better alternative is to use the open source implementation
org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64 from Commons Codec .
The 3rd approach is indeed to normalize the description by replacing all special characters with their ASCII equivalent. A rather easy solution is as follows:
String description = "unday ebra";
String descriptionNormalized = sun.text.Normalizer.normalize(
description, sun.text.Normalizer.DECOMP, 0).replaceAll(
"[^p{ASCII}]", "");
sun.text.Normalizer decomposes the string, e.g. "éàî" becomes "e´a`i^", after which non-ASCII characters are being removed using a regular expression.Again, note that it's usually a bad idea to use sun.* packages, see note about sun.* packages. The above code only works with J2SE 1.4 and J2SE 5.0, but it breaks in J2SE 6.0 (where
java.text.Normalizer became part of the public API ;-). A good open source implementation can be found here: ICU4J (com.ibm.icu.text.Normalizer).
Kind regards,
/Sigiswald

Weird behavior in form fields

I have a problem when trying to enter text in a form (on any webpage) or enter text in the Google search bar embedded in the top section of my Firefox browser. This also happens in a form field if I hit the <Enter> key.
When I start typing sometimes the Firefox "Find bar" opens or I get other strange behavior and am not able to type in the form. Several times when I try to start entering text in a form random text on the webpage is highlighted and the browser freezes up.
I confirmed that "Search for text when I start typing" is unchecked as is explained here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Quick%20find%20bar%20opens%20when%20typing%20in%20text%20fields?esab=a&as=aaq.
Any ideas what in the world could be going on and how I can fix this issue?
System information:
Firefox 16.0.2
Windows 7
Thanks much.

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Creating a profile":
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues
If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox
You can also try to reset Firefox:
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting

How do I lock a PDF form field after it has been completed by a user?

We have a problem with privacy on our downloadable Pdf Forms for customers, they are required to complete personal details within the Pdf Form Fields and then must be processed by our account team.
But we would require customer completed forms to be disabled from any third party or employee tampering with the entered details.
Once the data has been input into the form provided online and saved and sent-on it needs to be read ONLY from then on!
Help please, Chris.

It depends how secure they need to be. You could include a script in the form which sets the fields to be read-only when the form is submitted, but that can easily be bypassed (and may not be respected by third party PDF applications). Search this forum topic for examples, it's been asked many times before.
If you have Acrobat you can flatten a form, turning the fields into regular page content, but that's not possible in Adobe Reader X. While the flattened page can no longer be edited in Reader, it can still be edited in Acrobat via the touchup tools, so for complete security you would need to apply encryption to the flattened PDF (via a certifying signature or DRM).

How to handle a comma in a field in CSV file during FCC ?

Hi,
I am having a requirement where we have to convert a CSV file into XML using File Content Conversion . The issue is one of the field in the file is having a comma inside. So the XML parser is taking it as a field separator and throwing an error.
The contents of the file are as follows:
"02975859","New Key","9","Failed, rejected by RTI server"
How to handle a comma inside field "Failed, rejected by RTI server".
Any help would be appreciated.
Regards
Pravesh

Hi ,
You have to write an java mapping programm to perdromance this task , in a estandar way i think is not possible , because the fiel adapter have just one option for the delimiter character.
Here's some code that could help you
Supouse a file in this way:
1,rahul,siemens,mumbai
2,consultant,12032005
1,viswanath,sisl,hyderabad
2,systemeng,23052005
package TXTMapping;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.util.Map;
import com.sap.aii.mapping.api.StreamTransformation;
public class TMapping implements StreamTransformation {
private Map map;
public void setParameter (Map param){
map = param;
public void execute (InputStream in, OutputStream out){
try{
out.write("<?xml version ='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>".getBytes());
out.write("<ns0:Output_Data xmlns:ns0=\"urn:javamapping_test\">".getBytes());
String line = null;
BufferedReader bin = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
while((line = bin.readLine())!= null){
String Company = null;
String Name = null;
String Place = null;
String Desgn = null;
String Since = null;
char[] str= new char[100];
str = line.toCharArray();
String[] Data = new String[10];
int S1 = 0;
int s2 = 2;
for (int i=2; i<line.length(); i++)
if (str<i>==',' && str[0]=='1')
Data[S1]= line.substring(s2,i);
S1=S1+1;
s2 = i+1;
if (i == line.length()-1 && str[0] == '1')
Data[S1]= line.substring(s2,i+1);
Name = Data[0];
Company = Data[1];
Place = Data[2];
out.write ("<Data>".getBytes());
out.write ("<Header>".getBytes());
out.write (("<Name>"Name"</Name>").getBytes());
out.write (("<Company>"Company"</Company>").getBytes());
out.write (("<Place>"Place"</Place>").getBytes());
out.write ("</Header>".getBytes());
if (str<i>==',' && str[0]=='2')
Data[S1]= line.substring(s2,i);
S1=S1+1;
s2 = i+1;
if (i == line.length()-1 && str[0] == '2')
Data[S1]= line.substring(s2,i+1);
Desgn = Data[0];
Since = Data[1];
out.write ("<Item>".getBytes());
out.write (("<Designation>"Desgn"</Designation>").getBytes());
out.write (("<Since>"Since"</Since>").getBytes());
out.write ("</Item>".getBytes());
out.write ("</Data>".getBytes());
out.write("</ns0:Output_Data>".getBytes());
catch(Throwable t){
t.printStackTrace();

How to handle warning message for the fields in tab merging , PERSONAS 2.0

Hi all,
Please advice me on the below issue.
In a transaction VA32 , I have merged the fields from one tab to another tab using tab caching.
when i try to change the value of a merged fields , it throws the warnings message. So it is continuously looping from one tab to another tab.
So i tried to use the additional editor concepts in tab caching as below.
Looping is stopped and throws warning message in the same tab.
All the changes are saved successfully only when the enter button is clicked once in the main screen, else the changes are not saved and my previous value remains.
Anybody have an idea on how we can use Additional actions in Tab caching concepts.
Thank you,
Arun

Hi Kranthi,
When i try to save the fields which i merged from different tab is not saving.
Please find the below details.
Green highlighted fields are custom fields which is merged from different screen like header or item overview screen. This is handled in script button.
Red highlighted fields are merged from different tab like shipping or sales using tab caching concept.
While changing the value of the fields which is merged from different tab , and press ENTER then it throws the Warning message if occurs.
After warning message, if i try to save using the script button for copying all the custom fields which is merged from different screen , pasted it to their respective screens and also saved.
Its working fine.
When i try to save it before pressing ENTER button then the respective changes had made in the merged fields from different tab are not reflected.
How we can handle this issue?
Thank you,
Arun

How to handle Invalid characters(Square Box) in BI

Hi All,
Daily I am getting Invalid character(Square Box) issue with 0Material description and material manufacture part number when the it is being loaded to targets.
This data is being loaded to many data targets and daily they are being failed .
I have checked the text in MARA Table and found that there also the square box is appearing in the description.But when i copy the text and past it in word document in the place of box it is appearing as space/Tab.
Can you please help me how to handle this type of issue in BI .
Thanks in advance

Hi Binbi1,
   This eror is due to carriage returns which turns into a square box when transferring data, this can not be corrected through the RSKC, this is solved through an ABAP routine in the transformation rules, use this code:
DATA i_text type c length 60.
i_text = SOURCE_FIELDS-/BIC/ZMBS_FT1. "this is your material description field
REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF '#'
          IN i_text WITH ' '.
REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF '□'
          IN i_text WITH ' '.
RESULT = i_text.
I hope this help you....

Safari pre-fills form fields like email addresses, how do I get it to stop?

On certain Safari form fields my computer fills in the rest of a word I recently typed if I type the first letter, but I want to either get it to stop doing that or also learn how to clear that history every once and a while - how do I do that?

Open Safari's Preferences and click on the AutoFill icon. Make sure all three options are unchecked. If they were checked, unchecking them should fix your problem. Let us know what happens.
To clear a form while keeping AutoFill activated, click on the Edit button beside the appropriate AutoFill option, find the entry for that web site, and delete it. Editing the Address Book option will open your Address Book to your card for editing.

How to display the time in form field that has to refresh 4 every sec & min

Hi Frndz....
I am Apps Technical Consultant....
.. my requirement is i want to display the DATE TIME ( 16-OCT-2007 16:23:45)
in this format in form field.
am done this but am unable to do that the time has to change for every second and minute.....means when the form is running (runtime) the time has to refresh like the our digital watch...
......Kindly help me about this problem....
..................eagerly waiting 4 ur reply..........
if u get solution or any suggestions u can mail to : [email protected]
Bye Frndz..........

Hi,
Thank u for ur replay,
If we use timer, we have to refresh for every second
so it may be complex....
using java beans timer is better think so..
and i have one more dought that how get the DB date
time in form field...
i know to get DB date time .... $$DBDATETIME$$
but i want to use select statement through this i get
the DB date time can you
help me on this...
Ganga...New account for your second post?? why don't you use the same account??
To get the Database date in a select statement use the SYSDATE pseudo in a select statement.
SCOTT@ORCL> SELECT SYSDATE FROM DUAL;
SYSDATE
17-OCT-07
SCOTT@EBOS> SELECT TO_CHAR(SYSDATE, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH:MI:SS AM') FROM DUAL;
TO_CHAR(SYSDATE,'DD-MON
17-OCT-2007 10:14:13 AM
SCOTT@ORCL>Tony

How to handle weird characters in form fields (like bullet points from Word docs)

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for