John,

What Chris is refering to is I replied to this message below saying that fixed
the problem. In this post you left out the 1, in the substr command.

The post that really fixed the problem was the one before this. I was not
using the exact example of my problem so when I took your advice it did not
work until I SET DUMB OFF and changed it to 12 (the actual size of the field)

Sorry for confusion and thanks for the help

John wrote:
*Try this: In the Properties dialog for the description, change:
*
*Expression to SUBSTR(description,15)
*Check off "Stretch with overflow"
*Clear anything out of Format.



>Wait a minute back....
>
>I have report with a description field the client wants a ton of fileds on the report so I have the description field to show only 15 char of the 30 char field. The problem is it does not show the first 15 char all the time. For some reason if a space is in the description then it will break there if the...
>
>This was the original question. Now, the word running through the 15th place will get cut off if your field spacing won't allow it and you don't have Stretch checked. This is why I posted what I posted to lead Jeff through to the right answer.
>
>Now, I'd like to know how SUBSTR(description,1,15) gives you the rightmost 15 characters?
>
>
>>Wait a minute, to clear up some confusion here, whether you use SUBSTR(fld, 1,15) or LEFT(fld,15) makes no difference to the original question. The original question was, when I have a field that has spaces, it is sometimes not showing the data after the last space. This is not because you are using LEFT instead of SUBSTR. In fact Johns statement is the wrong syntax. His would give you the RIGHT n characters starting with 15. My guess is that problem was solved by making the field a couple of pixels wider and so allowed room for the maximum width of the data (in pixels in the fields font). Is this correct? If not, what REALLY fixed it?