importing DBF files trims whitespaces

  • Thread starter Thread starter ilya
  • Start date Start date
I

ilya

I have a file in dbase format, in which some text fields
are whitespace-sensitive, that is " X" is not the same
as "X ". When I open the file with Excel 2000,
all these fields contain just "X", with no space at all.

I wonder if it is a known bug/feature, or I just am doing
something wrong? Does anyone know a workaround (other than
dump use text format instead of dbf for the exchange)

Thanx,
Ilya
 
I know I have the same problem with .txt files.

What version of xl are you using?

If it's xl2k or higher, try:
data|Import external data
(or data|get external data)
(the caption changed.)

When I did it with a .dbf (saved from excel as DBF 4), the leading spaces were
retained.

(But trailing spaces were lost.)

I used xl2002 in my testing.

========
When I have this trouble in my .txt files, I'll go to the application that
creates the text file (usually the mainframe) and change all the spaces to a
unique character ($).

Then I import and do a mass change ($ to space).

I'm not sure if this is possible in your dbase program--but be careful and don't
destroy your original data.
 
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