Converting Info in Word to Access

[Guest]

I have a collection of email addresses listed in Microsoft Word that I want
to convert to an Access table. The addresses are in linear form separated by
commas. How would I export them to Access?

 

[John Nurick]

I'm not sure just what your list consists of. Is it just a succcession
of email addresses separated by commas, e.g.

(e-mail address removed), (e-mail address removed), (e-mail address removed) ...

or is it something like this:
John Doe, (e-mail address removed)
Patricia Roe, (e-mail address removed)
Andrew Hoe, (e-mail address removed)

or something else? Is it in a Word table, or just in ordinary
paragraphs?

The general idea is to use Word's search-and-replace features to arrange
the list so that there's paragraph (in Word terms) for each address,
with any other fields in the paragraph separated by commas or tab
characters (i.e. as in my second example above).

If the list is in a Word table, use Table|Convert to text to convert it
to ordinary paragraphs. If there are any commas in the data, use tabs to
as separators.

Then delete everything in the document except list, and save it as plain
text without linebreaks. The result should be a file that Access can
import (File|Get External Data).

 

[Guest]

Thank you. That was a great answer. I have one set of email addresses like
your first example and a new set with the first and last name separated by
commas, then the email address, as in the second example. Do I still need to
use tab between them?

 

[John Nurick]

Either this
John Doe, (e-mail address removed)
Patricia Roe, (e-mail address removed)
or this
John, Doe, (e-mail address removed)
Patricia, Roe, (e-mail address removed)
will import happily, the first into two fields, the second into three.

Where things get complicated is if you have commas actually in the data,
as in these examples which most English-speaking humans can parse but
which computers find difficult:
Peter, Paul and Mary, (e-mail address removed)
Sue, Grabbit & Runne, Attorneys at Law, (e-mail address removed)

For these you need either to use tabs to separate the fields
Peter, Paul and Mary<tab>[email protected]
or else enclose text fields in quote marks
"Peter, Paul and Mary", (e-mail address removed)