DBF file comes into Excel with column widths of 254

[dan.jordan]

We import DBF (Dbase) files (produced by our ESRI mapping software)
into Excel 2003. We're wondering why the resulting column widths are
almost all 254 once Excel opens the DBF file. The data populating most
of these columns is generally under 10 characters/digits.

Thanks for any clues.

Dan

 

[Harlan Grove]

(e-mail address removed) wrote...

We import DBF (Dbase) files (produced by our ESRI mapping software)
into Excel 2003. We're wondering why the resulting column widths are
almost all 254 once Excel opens the DBF file. The data populating most
of these columns is generally under 10 characters/digits.

The most likely reason is that the fields in question are marked as
text with column width 254. If there are ANY entries in the columns
that don't look like numbers, the columns contain text. As for width,
if the field is variable length, Excel may truncate it to 254.