hello ppl
i've gt a textfield that allows the user to type in some text, how do i save the format of the text in the database such that when i retrieve and display it again, it will look like how the user entered it?

e.g. user enters below:

some lines of text, blah blah blah
     *user pressed 'enter' and made some bullet-style text
     *2nd line
back to normal, no more bullet-style

i saw an example of how to do it somewhere in the past, can't remember is it in this forum or what, anyways, do i have to use javascript to check when the user pressed enter, or can i do it in asp???

If you save the text exactly as they enter it, it should come back like that with the exception of the hard returns. Well, the hard returns WILL be there, but the browser will ignore them. You can either render what was typed in <pre></pre> or replace all occurances of vbcrlf in the text with a <br>.

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder.

thnks peter, using the replace method works...coz i dun understand the part abt rendering what's typed in <pre></pre>, what is it?

<pre></pre> is for "preformatted" or something close to that.

Take the following block of text:

    here is the first line with 1 tab and a hard return
        here is the second line with 2 tabs and hard return
here is the third line with no tabs

If you dump this straight to the browser... it will render like this:

here is the first line with 1 tab and a hard return here is the second line with 2 tabs and hard return here is the third line with no tabs

because the browser ignores the tabs and the hard returns. It will wrap the end using the standard text flow rules. So you have to either replace the hard returns and tabs with appropriate substitutes (i.e. <br> and several &nbsp;) or you need to wrap the output in <pre></pre>. Using <pre></pre>, the above block should render EXACTLY like it exists. The browser will render with a fixed width font as well.

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder.