Access Rich-Text: Which subset of HTML is supported?

Question

Microsoft Access text boxes can be configured as "Rich Text", allowing the user to apply formatting such as bold text or different font sizes. Internally, this "rich text" is stored as HTML.

Since the formatting options provided by Access are limited, it is obvious that only a subset of HTML is used for storing the formatted text. Is there a list somewhere describing which subset of HTML is used? Ideally, I'd like to have a list of tags that could be found in a text field formatted using this Access feature.

Answer 1

If you want an easy way to test combinations of tags, or see which tags Access is using for the rendering, you can create a simple "IDE" concept with a couple text boxes, and a few lines of VBA code.

The box on the left has the source, and the box on the right has the rendered HTML. When you change the text in either box, you see the changes live in both places. On the HTML side, you can use the toolbar to format your text as desired, then review the source on the left side to see which tags Access used.

To create this simple editor, use the following steps:

1. Create a blank Microsoft Access form.
2. Add two text boxes, naming them txtSource and txtHTML.
3. Set the Text Format of the right box to Rich Text.
4. On both boxes, set the Enter Key Behavior to New Line in Field.
5. Set both boxes to use [Event Procedure] for the On Change event.

On the VBA side, add the following lines of code to keep the text in sync:

Private Sub txtHTML_Change()
    txtSource = txtHTML.Text
End Sub

Private Sub txtSource_Change()
    txtHTML = txtSource.Text
End Sub

Hope that helps someone else out there! :-)