Linked Excel comment field truncating in Access

[Gregg T.]

I have an Excel spreadsheet that contains a column of
comments, some of which are quite long. I have linked the
spreadsheet to an Access 2000 database. Although the
Access linked definition specifies a memo field, the
content of the Comment column in Excel gets truncated
by/in Access. It appears that the comment is being
truncated at the approx. 255 characters limit imposed by a
text data type, but the data type is memo, not text.

Microsoft knowledge base includes an article on a known
bug in Access 2000 that causes this type of behavior upon
export from Access to Excel, but there appears to be no
discussion of the reverse taking place, for a linked
table. The KB article mentions that the problem has to do
with Access outputting in Excel 95 format, instead of the
current, more recent format.

Any ideas on how I can link my Excel file, and retain the
full length of the comment field values?

Thanks,
Gregg T.

 

[Ken Smith]

Link your Excel file but then improt the data into an
Access table and see if that fixes it.

Otherwise move up to 2003.

 

[Gregg T]

Ken,

Thanks for the reply.

Are you saying that, after linking and then importing to
a table, that the linked file field will be corrected? I
need the table linked because it is a dynamic file that
changes on the Excel side. I was under the impression
that importing gives me a snapshot view, at the time of
imporing, that would not change as Excel is modified.
Have I misunderstood the difference between the two?

And will 2003, for sure, fix this problem?