Hello
Can you help me please with the CONTAINS syntax as it seems there are some MS Access documentation that is confused with SQL.
I want to select values in Col1 that match:
%a% or %b%
I would like to use CONTAINS.
Any hint?
Thanks!
you can use LIKE operator in SQL server.
Thanks but I end up having a large number of:
Col1 like '%a%' or
Col1 like '%b%' etc
What are you trying to solve? Can you provide sample data for us to work with?
It is just to have multiple criteria in a more concise way, e.g.:
Col1
aba
ant
reo
roy
nir
tom
yfi
etc
Instead of doing:
WHERE
Col1 like '%a%' or
Col1 like '%b%' or
etc
I was looking for a way to say:
Col1 contains '%a%' or '%b%' or etc
Maybe
Where col1 like '%[a-z]%'
Good shout but a, b, etc was an example, in reality it will be fgr, tgh, eyb, erv etc 
Read it again and look at the help documwnt on LIKE look for range
1 Like
There are several ways of simplifying your LIKE statements as @yosiasz points out. You can also pre-process the search criteria into a temp table and then join to the temp table.
But - if you are looking for a simpler syntax then you might be better off setting up a text catalog and using CONTAINS.
