thanks very much for posting it!

I have a database with an ntext field (it’s not my database and so cannot alter the definition of the field). This field contained HTML data (well XML data really, defining a custom data definition). At any rate I had some poorly formed XML in some records and needed to do a replace. Naturally NTEXT would not allow the replace. So, here’s what I did

Created a table called mytable with an ID field and a varchar(max) field, inserted the records from the first table (with NTEXT field) where the XML was no good. Did my replace in mytable, then joined then back together on the ID field doing the update back to the NTEXT field from the corrected varchar(max) field

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[mytable](
[id] [bigint] NULL,
[html] [varchar](max) NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]

insert mytable
select id,html from tablewithbadhtml
where html like ‘%badlyformed xml%’

update mytable
set html = replace(html,’bad_bit_of_xml’,'good_bit_of_xml’)

update t
set html = m.html
from tablewithbadhtml t inner join mytable m on m.id = t.id

It works for me because mine is a one off fix, but you could use it in othr processing by using #tmp tables perhaps. Depending on what you are trying to do, this may be efficient or it may not be.

For example, this works:

create table #test (
	[desc]	ntext
)

insert into #test values ( '17'' x 14'' solid maple floor, recessed lights' )

select cast(replace(cast([desc] as nvarchar(max)),'''','') as ntext)
from #test

-- result is 17 x 14 solid maple floor, recessed lights
-- the update statement would be:

update props1
set [desc] = cast(replace(cast([desc] as nvarchar(max)),'''','') as ntext)

Hope that helps!

select cast(replace(cast(desc as nvarchar(max)),’’’,””) as ntext)
from props1

when i run it it says query executed successfully but the text still contains curly quotes:

17’ x 14’ solid maple floor, recessed lights

i would appreciate any help.
thanks.