How to validate email addresses in Access?

Question

I need to validate an email field in a table in Access 2010. I tried:

Is Null OR ((Like "*?@?*.?*") AND
  (Not Like "*[ ,;]*"))

but this did not work.

Answer 1

It appears that your database is in ANSI 92 mode, and when you pasted in the rule...

Is Null OR ((Like "*?@?*.?*") AND (Not Like "*[ ,;]*"))

...Access automatically changed Like to ALike, producing...

Is Null Or ((ALike "*?@?*.?*") And (Not ALike "*[ ,;]*"))

The problem is that ALike uses the ANSI wildcard characters, so you need to change the rule to

Is Null Or ((ALike "%_@_%._%") And (Not ALike "%[ ,;]%"))