I found a great tip on Pasting Without Style to paste unstyled text into a field. But that still requires the user do that every time. If the user forgets then you are back to having a problem of styled text in a field.

I also see that when defining fields, you can Auto-Enter a Calculated Value then use the Text Formatting Functions to select a style. Is this the "best practice" way to strictly enforce field styles? Or is there a simpler way that I'm overlooking?

Is this the "best practice" way to strictly enforce field styles? Or is there a simpler way that I'm overlooking?

Yes it is!, isn't it simple enough???

--sd

Thanks!

I ran some quick tests, and it appears to me that the calculation isn't run on pre-existing fields until you make any edit in the field. Just clicking in and out of the field didn't cause the calculation to run. Or am I missing something?

A Replace Field Contents, with the field as the source would update existing records (be sure to make a backup before playing with Replace).

In general, I would recommend stripping formatting out of field data, and instead applying formatting to the fields on the layouts. If the field data has formatting, it will override the layout's field formatting, which can be a big nuisance (think of all the forms or reports that might require different fonts or font sizes from the data entry/view screens).

To remove formatting of data entered into a field, define an auto-enter calc option on your field (with the 'Do not replace' option unchecked)

TextFormatRemove(Field)

or for FM7 compatibility:

Evaluate(Quote(Field))

This too would only affect new data entry, so that Replace trick would be needed to refresh existing records.

you guys are awesome, thanks!

If you don't want to apply an auto-enter calc to all your fields, you could make a script containing the command Paste[No style]; then set up custom menus so that your script is called by the Paste command in the Edit menu.