Question

I’ve found a lot on this topic but still can’t seem to get it to work. I have the following line of code:

If isNull(DLookup("id", my_table, my_field & "='" & temp_value & "'")) Then

The problem is a value in my_field of my_table is “O’Connell” (with a single quote), and I’m not sure how to get Dlookup to find it. I’ve tried using:

my_field & "=" & chr(34) & temp_value & chr(34)

And a host of other multi-quote options, but I just can’t seem to get it to work. Though I can use VBA to modify the temp_value to include or not include the single quote, since the single quote already exists in the table, I need to make sure it matches. I’m just not sure how to tackle it.

Answer 1

Though the suggestions and answers here do work and resolve many issues with quotes in text, my issue ended up being related to the character I was seeing as a single quote not really being a single quote. For what it’s worth, the data I was using was exported from Siebel, and the single quote I was seeing was actually chr(146), where a regular single quote (I say “regular” for lack of a better term) is chr(39).

If having issues with quotes, I found it helpful to examine the chr values of each character in the string. There may be a better way to do this, but this loop should help:

for i=1 to len(a_string)
    debug.print mid(a_string,i,1) & " - " & asc(mid(a_string,i,1)
next i

The asc function gives you the chr code for a character, so this loops through the string and shows you each character and its associated chr code in the Immediate window (using debug.print). This also helps in finding other “hidden” (or non-visible) characters that may exist in a string.

Once discovered, I used the replace function to replace chr(146) with two single quotes (two chr(39)s), as suggested by HansUp, and that worked perfectly.