Special Characters

In general, you should avoid using special characters in text fields. Characters such as the hyphen (-), slash (/), asterisk (*), and plus sign (+) may cause confusion, for example, because they can also represent mathematical instructions.

The pound sign (#), as noted earlier, is a formatting character in Letter Generation output. To avoid problems with Letter Generation, do not enter a pound sign (#) in addresses.

Special characters won’t always cause immediate problems, but they represent a potential source of complications when Banner interoperates with other systems.

The following characters should generally be avoided in text fields:

• the pound sign (#)
• the slash (/)
• the plus (+)
• the hyphen (-)
• the ampersand (&)
• the at-sign (@), except in e-mail addresses
• the dollar sign ($)
• the exclamation point (!)
• the comma (,)
• the asterisk (*)
• the percent sign (%)

If you must use a special character, use it without any spaces before or after it:

• Valid: Separated/Divorced
• Invalid: Separated / Divorced