Thank you all.  I took your advice and coded itemchanged and itemerror instead.  Much more straight forward.

Hi,

Check what code you have (if any), in the itemError event. Maybe it's setting the focus to another column or similar.

There's several possible return values that might be useful in the ItemError event,

Also check what's in the Get- LoseFocus events of the control. When the Validation error message pops up, losfocus will be triggered and when you close the messagebox, getfocus will be triggered.

(Not fo forget about itemFocusChanging event).

regards.

Hi Jay.

Hi All.

We are using expressions extensively since 1994 and so far, never have any issues with it.
Example:

column description string(40)
Validation Expression: len(trim(gettext())) > 0 and len(gettext()) = len(leftTrim(gettext())) and pos(gettext(), "'") = 0 and pos( gettext(), '"') = 0
Validation Message: 'Description cannot be blank, contain double or single quotes or have leading spaces.'

I can suspect following:

Something wrong with validating expression

Beside datawindow column validation, there is a validating script on datawindow in the itemchanged event or else.

Jay, can you export window and datawindow and attach it here, i am kind of curios.

Thank you

Vladimir

I agree with Matt. I avoid the use of the DW validation expression/message for similar reasons.

I've always found the DW validation expressions to be problematic and never quite do what I want them to do.  Case in point when the user blanks out a problematic entry they often still get the error message (cause the field is null or somesuch thing).

I usually either validate in Itemchanged event or post a 'ue_postitemchanged' type event to validate things and then return the user to the column if they enter in bad data.

My $.07 worth ($.02 adjusted for inflation)...

Matt