Importing Tab Delimited Text File to an Existing Table in Access

[Rita Brasher]

Office 2007, just upgraded from 2000 ( OMGOODNESS!! What a flippin'
NIGHTMARE!!)


I am simply trying to import a tab delimited text file into an existing
table in Access. In Office 2000, I was given an opportunity to change
the data type of columns to be imported during the import process
itself. In 2007, I am not given an option and end up with import errors
for every single row of data (over 1.5 million rows) because it reads a
text field of numbers as a number datatype. I can find no documentation
on how to solve my problem as Microsoft only provides information for
importing Excel files. Having well over a million rows, I cannot
maintain the data in an Excel file.


Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Rita Brasher
Project Engineer
FedEx Express


PS Here I thought I wasn't as productive as I could be because I was
behind on Office revisions. That was a joke!! Would maintaining a
semblance of similarity have been too much to ask??? If the simplest of
functions are going to all become difficult, I may have to go back to 2000.

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Rita

Often, the safer approach to import is to import data into a "temporary"
table, one you reserve for importing the data to.

Then you can run a series of queries the parse that raw import data into the
proper, well-normalized Access tables.

The problem with a lot of raw import tab delimited text file "data" is that
it is NOT well-normalized. If you're going to get the best use of Access
features/functions, you need to feed it data it works with best.

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Access MVP

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does not constitute endorsement thereof.

Any code or pseudocode included in this post is offered "as is", with no
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possible/necessary.

 

[Maarkr]

when I use the wizard to import text files (External Data, Import text File)
and setup the import (using Advanced options if necessary), it offers many
different options to change the data type for each column, and then I can
build a query to filter out any junk or convert values and rename the fields.

Is this saved as a .csv file?

 

[Rita Brasher]

These are .txt files, tab delimited. If I'm importing to an existing
table, which I am, I get NO options for changing data types. Hitting
the "Advanced" button only shows the fields to be imported with no data
type associated. I had NO problem importing in any of the previous
versions of Office.