Count letters, words, sentences and paragraphs

Here's a nice little database in the code archive at UtterAccess with functions to count the number of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs in text.

VBA function to strip illegal characters

Here's a post from the code archive at UtterAccess with a function to strip any disallowed characters from a string. It should be usuable from queries as well as from code.

Sample expressions to extract portion of text string in Access

This article from Microsoft reviews basic techniques for extracting part of a string, such as a first name from a full name.

It doesn't demonstrate newer techniques using the Split() function, but uses tried and tested approaches that should have broad application.

SUMMARY
This article lists sample expressions that you can use to extract a portion of a text string. These expressions are commonly used in the Update To line of an update query to place a portion of a larger field into a new field. You can adapt these expressions so that you can use them with other common formats. For example, you can use the expression that is used to extract "Doe" from "Doe, John" to extract "Seattle" from "Seattle, WA."