Importing From Paradox For Windows 1.0 to Access 2003

[Guest]

Will Access 2003 directly import tables from Paradox For Windows 1.0? All
that is indicated in Microsoft's product specs is Paradox 3.x, 4.x, 5.0, and
8.0, but there is no mention as to whether these are DOS or Windows versions.

If a direct import is not possible, I could export the Paradox tables to a
text file and import into Access, but my concern is that I have Memo fields
(free-form unlimited length text) in my tables; does this type of field work
when exported to a text file (since the field itself may contain commas,
tabs, etc)?

Thanks in advance.

 

[John Nurick]

Hi Grant,

I can't speak for versions of Paradox except to suggest you try
importing a table and see what happens. But Access can import CSV files
with line breaks and tabs in the field values. Just make sure that the
values are delimited (qualified) with quote marks, and that any quote
marks in the data are escaped by doubling, e.g. this value in the
database
"Hello," he said.<CR><LF>
She looked at him uneasily.
becomes this in the CSV file:
"""Hello,"" he said.<CR><LF>
She looked at him uneasily."

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply.

Actually I did figure out how to do the import. Turns out using Paradox's
Export utility does not export the contents of the memo field (as Paradox
stores the memo field contents in a different file with an .mb extension, not
in the .db file). This is the case regardless of what type of export is done
(.csv, Quattro Pro, Excel, etc).

The solution is to use Paradox's Copy utility, and specify an extension of
..dbf for the destination file. This triggers Paradox to create a dBase IV
copy of the database, which includes the memo contents (in a separate .dbt
file). I haven't purchased Access yet, but I believe it will import dBase IV
databases without any problem (as per Microsoft's specs).