Numeric Field Overflow - Linked .txt File

[Joe A.]

I have a linked .txt file with about 267,000 records. I
need to change the data type of a field from text to
number. So, I was originally able to use a make-table
query using the .txt table to create a new table and I
changed the data type to number. I created a delete query
to delete the table and changed the make-table query to an
append query. Now, every time I try to run the append
query, I get a "Numeric Field Overflow" error.

Has anybody run into this before? Any suggestions?
Should I import the .txt file instead of linking it?

 

[John Nurick]

Hi Joe,

One typical cause of overflow errors when importing from a text file is
that values in the textfile are larger than can be stored in fields of
the numeric type in question. Remember that Access's default number
field is a Long, which can't store values larger than than about 2.1
billion. If you chose an Integer field, the limit is about 32,000.

It could be that some of the values in the text file are too big