How does a user insert zero in MS Access?

Question

MS Access seems to support zeros in the code, but I can’t figure out for my whole life how to enter zero directly into the table. This is crazy because, as soon as the field has a shape inserted into it, it can never be deleted / set to zero. Typically, using zero-length strings will take care of this, but Access handles the XML export of zero and zero strings differently. Zero excludes the associated XML tag, and a zero-length string sends an empty tag.

Answer 1

Well, I don’t think this is a solvable problem, and my initial question was a little inappropriate. The problem is not related to zeros, although they are related, as with how the table was originally created. If you use the xsd file to create the tables that you plan to export, something happens under the hood in Access, which forces these fields to be processed somewhat differently than fields created using editors.

The only solution I found was to create a new field in the table, rename the old field, copy the data from the old field to the new field and delete the old field.

After that, empty fields in which there was data at one point are no longer included in the XML output. This is probably not the best way to do this, and I still don't know exactly why this is happening, but at least I can solve this problem.

Answer 2

Are you talking about the need to do this in a Datasheet view? If you need to do this in an update request, you can do it like this:

UPDATE test SET test.test = Null; 

Answer 3

Does setting the "Allow zero length" option in the table help help? This can cause an empty string to be interpreted as NULL.

Answer 4

press ctrl-0 and zero is added.

Answer 5

Deleting all characters will work, but Access is a bit volatile. Pressing backspace or delete will not work if no characters are specified in the field. I believe that it’s best to enter a few characters, select everything and click “Delete”, change focus and change the record. After all of the above, if you run a query looking for "null", a record will be found.

Answer 6

I am really looking for a way for a layman to record directly in a table. In MSSQL, you can simply press ctrl-0 and enter zero. Deleting all characters does not work. Instead of a null value, you remain an empty string. They are not handled equally with Access for export purposes.

I think I'm going to exit by creating an xslt file for use during export, which removes empty tags. Therefore, the user cannot tell the difference.

Of course, it would be nice to be able to enter zero.

Answer 7

Just delete all the characters in the column and access will add you a null value if the coupon allows it.