“Square pegs in round holes” as the saying goes is not a natural fit leaving unwanted gaps if it can fit at all. Microsoft’s Access input mask utility is designed to make data entry fit properly into a field and avoid creating data leaks maintaining data integrities.

Ideally, this should be set to selected fields in a table (and it can be set at the form level too). I mention ‘selected fields’ as you do not want to over use this feature and restrict or frustrate end-users when entering new records.

Microsoft Access Input Mask: Getting To Know The Input Mask Code

When you want to create an Access input mask, in the design view of the table locate the ‘Input Mask‘ property and click the elipses icon (to the immediate right) to launch the Input Mask Wizard tool.

This wizard has a few examples to try out but is not the full list of options open to you. You can build you own codes too but this will require some more knowledge on the code markers around.

Try this example: >L<?????????????? which means the first character will be capitalised followed by upto 14 characters in lowercase. The code > represents the uppercase format which mweans the < means lowercase. The letter L represents a mandatory letter followed by ? meaning optional letters.

Other code markers change the rules which is explained in more detail from the Microsoft help files in Access or by searchiung online for “Access Input Mask“.

These are some of the codes you can use:
0, 9, #, L, ?, A, a, &, C, >, <, !, \, “”,  *, . , : ; – /

Anyone have some great examples of Access input mask codes they would like to share? Why not reply on the comment box below.

Tags: access input mask, access input masks, designing access tables, input mask in access, MS Access, ms access input mask