Use Field Descriptions (Custom Analysis window)

The Use Field Descriptions check box determines whether Access ELF incorporates into its lexicon the text you use to describe fields. These Descriptions appear as one of the columns when tables are displayed in Design mode. For instance, in the Northwind database, most fields have short descriptions. The CategoryID field is described as "Number automatically assigned to a new category." CategoryName is described as "Name of a food category." Picture is described as "A picture representing the food category."

Depending on how specific your style of description is, you might choose to include or exclude these descriptions. Access ELF automatically applies several complex algorithms to try to determine which of the words used in the description might be valid synonyms for the field name. For example, in the case of CategoryID, the word Category has a synonym "set" (order, class, set) Since "assign" appears in the description of CategoryID, and one of the synonyms of "assign" happens to be "set", Access ELF considers "assign" a synonym for CategoryID.

This is why "Show the assign for seafood." will translate as
SELECT DISTINCT Categories.CategoryID , Categories.CategoryName FROM Categories WHERE Categories.CategoryName = "Seafood" ;

In contrast, if "Use field descriptions" is unchecked, Access ELF won't make this association. In this case, since no particular field seems to be requested, the full set of fields is returned:
SELECT DISTINCTROW Categories.* FROM Categories WHERE Categories.CategoryName = "Seafood" ;

Pretty clearly, assign ("automatically assigned") was not used here as a synonym of CategoryID -- this overlap is just a coincidence! That's a fair example of how inexact the process will be. You may or may not be satisfied with the correlations between words used in the descriptions and the field monikers for which they're accepted as synonyms. If you're unhappy with this behavior, you can disable it by unchecking the "Use field descriptions" box.

To see whether Access ELF has applied this feature in a way that makes sense to you, use the Browse feature of the Lex Lookup window. For instance, by setting the Browse radio button to Syns (synonyms) and entering CategoryID into the "Browse for synonyms of:" box (then pressing return), you'll be shown a list of all words that have been defined as synonyms for CategoryID. In this case, only "Category·ID" and "assign" appear in the list.

Note that "Category·ID" is ELF's private shorthand for the single compound word "Category ID". The other special symbol you should be aware of is the underscore, appended to the end of a table or query name. This indicates that the name is being used to refer to a data set (table or query) rather than any of the other uses it may have in the lexicon (for instance, as the full name or partial name of a field). As an example, the word "categories" has no definition in the Northwind interface. Only "categories_" is defined.