Newbie question concerning Tab delimited files

[Jeff]

Hi

I am really a newbie at Access and have not used it for years. I have
Access 2002 running on Windows XP.

The file in question is a tab delimited file to which I regularly add
additional rows and then sort it based on the first column. I have always
done this in Excel because I am familiar with it. Unfortunately I am now
butting against the 65,536 row limit in Excel and am therefore looking for
something else to use for the simple purpose of adding additional rows
(using copy and paste from smaller tab-delimited files opened in Excel),
sorting them based on the first column and then saving them as tab-delimited
text files.

Since I already own Access 2002 I thought I might use it for this purpose
now that Excel can no longer accommodate the additional rows I need, but
being a total novice at Access I am concerned about how to go about this and
potential problems I might encounter.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Is there a simpler way to do this (sort a tab-delimited text file based on
one column)?

Thanks.

Jeff

 

[Klatuu]

The best way to do this would be to use the TransferText action or method
(Action for a Macro, Method in VBA) to import the text file into an Access
table. You can set this up to do the transfer autmatically for you by
creating an Import Specification.
To create an Import Spec, you need to do the import manually the first time.
After you have identified the file to import and the import wizard shows,
click on Advanced. You can then define the file format (Tab Delimited) and
specify the field names, data types, and which columns to include or exclued.
Once you have the properties specified, click on Save As and give the
specification a name. Now, you can use the named import spec in a macro or
VBA to do the import for you. For more detail, see VBA Help on TransferText.