Stripping RTF characters out of a varchar(max) sql server database field

can you post a sample of one data item too?

{\rtf1\ansi\deff0\deftab720{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss MS Sans Serif;}{\f1\froman\fcharset2 Symbol;}{\f2\fswiss MS Sans Serif;}{\f3\froman Times New Roman;}{\f4\froman Times New Roman;}{\f5\froman\fprq2 Times New Roman;}} {\colortbl\red0\green0\blue0;} \deflang1033\pard\plain\f5\fs24 I am pleased to offer this Medical Student Performance Evaluation for Erica Lubliner as a candidate for your post-graduate training program. Erica was raised in Anaheim, California. Her father died during her early childhood leaving her mother as the primary provider. Her mother, an immigrant from Mexico, faced many challenges as she tried to overcome financial, cultural and linguistic barriers while working as a factory worker. Erica served as an interpreter for her family and neighbors when they faced barriers to healthcare. Fortunately, her experiences as a first-generation student did not dissuade her from obtaining her educational goals and she was mentored by teachers who provided opportunities for her leadership and personal development. In high school, Erica excelled academically. She also held several leadership roles as a class officer and in athletics as captain of the varsity volleyball team, all while working to contribute to her family's household expenses. She is the first in her family to attend college. \par \par Erica matriculated at the University of California at Los Angeles with a double major in History and Women's Studies. She actively advocated for underserved students and became involved with the Scholarship Association for English as a Second Language Students (SAESL) during college. As a former ESL student, she identified with the challenges faced by students learning English for the first time. Erica was a College Advisor at Wilson High School in East Los Angeles, where she assisted and mentored students. She held several leadership positions and was the co-chair of the Chicanos for Creative Medicine organization and the undergraduate representative for the Latino Medical Student Association. \par \par Erica has continued to demonstrate excellent leadership abilities during medical school. She has actively participated in and organized activities for the Latino Medical Student Association, including being a Co-Chair, developing a Latino Health Lecture series, being a member of the board for the SAESL, and currently organizing a Latina women's professional group. One of her most cherished activities has been as editor of the BEAT Art and Literary Magazine. Erica has also continued to devote herself to community service by volunteering at health fairs, mentoring high school and premedical students and raising funds for scholarships. \par \par Erica's senior research thesis is an investigation of female medical student perspectives on how gendered interactions affect their medical education, specifically women of color. \par \plain\f3\fs24 \par }

If you are using this data in ASP.NET, that would be a better place to handle this, before displaying.  You might be able to use a System.Windows.Forms.RichTextBox, as an unsited worker.  Set the Rtf property to the rich-text from the database, and then get the plain text from the Text property.

Unfortunately that won't work as this is a web application not a windows application.

Is their an equivalent control on an asp.net page? If there is what is it?

Thanks,
SISDalia

You can add a reference to System.Windows.Forms to the web site, and use the RichTextBox control, since it is not being added to any page.  It is basically a worker class at that point.  I have used the System.Windows.Forms.TextBox control in a similar manner in the past.

Thanks, I added a reference to the system.windows.forms and an imports system.windows.forms to the top of my asp.net page.  How do I get the RichTextBox control to show up in my toolbox? or how do i reference it?

Just another followup question to this:  After the rtf gets stripped out and the new clean field is saved to the database, the next time the load function runs I get this error,
"ERROR: File format is not valid".  I suspect that when it is passed a field with no rtfs that it returns this error. How can I check with an if statement to see if the string being passed has rtf characters in it or not?

Thanks,
SISDalia

" next time the load function runs I get this error"

Can you explain what that means in more detail?

There is a format to RTF, and you should be able to look for patterns, like {\rtf1\.

The RTF characters get stripped out of the field.

So next time my application tries to load that same record,  the new data has no RTF characters in it.

The next time the form loads I automatically call the StripOutRichText function again because other records will have RTF characters...but for the ones that already got cleaned up the function returns that error.  

So the question is: how can I add an if statement that checks if there is RTF formatting or not? or how do I deal with the records where the RTF characters have been already stripped out.

Thanks,
SISDalia

Function StripOutRichText(ByVal strRTF As String)

   Dim RichTextBox As New RichTextBox


   RichTextBox.Rtf = strRTF  -- errors on this line for data that has no RTF.

   Return RichTextBox.Text


End Function

That would be something like this, I believe:

Public Shared Function StripOutRichText(ByVal inputText As String) As String
   If inputText.StartsWith("{\rtf") Then
      Dim worker As New RichTextBox()
      worker.Rtf = inputText
      Return worker.Text
   End If
   Return inputText
End Function

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Thank you that fixed the problem.  

I have another related question: is there a way to just keep the \par markings?
or is it all or none?

Should I enter this as a new question?

That would normally be a new question, but it is all or nothing in this case.

I just added the new question. Would you please take a look at it.  I appreciate your help.
Thanks,
Dalia