Automate Getting External Data from text file

[N. Graves]

I'm planning to develop a process to import data from an external flat
file to a new table automatically. As usual I'm having a hard time
getting started on the solution because of the Access's flexibility.

Please help me with your suggestion's about the best way accomplish
this or do you know of any examples that I could review or download.

Thanks in advance!

Norris

[Pieter Linden]

N. Graves <ng*****@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<n3********************************@4ax.com>. ..

I'm planning to develop a process to import data from an external flat
file to a new table automatically. As usual I'm having a hard time
getting started on the solution because of the Access's flexibility.

Please help me with your suggestion's about the best way accomplish
this or do you know of any examples that I could review or download.

Thanks in advance!

Norris

Norris,

You could run the import manually and save a specification, and then
use the specification name in your TransferText command. But without
further information about your file, it's hard to tell if that's the
correct answer.

If the data is delimited consistently, this is the easiest way to
accomplish what you want, but as of yet, we don't know that. Exactly
what kind of file is it? If it's something like Excel, then it's a
snap. If it's a text file with a standard structure (like a delimited
file), that's easy too... it's just when you have an inconsistent
format that things get ugly and you have to resort to parsing the text
and using recordsets to append it to one or more tables...

I guess look up TransferText and TransferSpreadsheet in the help and
have a go at whichever one sounds closer to what you want. After a
successful import, you could move the file or delete it, but I'm
getting ahead of myself. You have to import it successfully first.

HTH,
Pieter

[N. Graves]

Thanks for the feed back, that got me going in the right direction. I
was about ready to write all the code to make this happen and it looks
like with the transfertext and specification name I will achieve my
goals much easier than first thought.

Thank you again!

Norris

On 20 Jan 2004 15:02:09 -0800, pi********@hotmail.com (Pieter Linden)
wrote:

N. Graves <ng*****@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<n3********************************@4ax.com>. ..

I'm planning to develop a process to import data from an external flat
file to a new table automatically. As usual I'm having a hard time
getting started on the solution because of the Access's flexibility.

Please help me with your suggestion's about the best way accomplish
this or do you know of any examples that I could review or download.

Thanks in advance!

Norris

Norris,

You could run the import manually and save a specification, and then
use the specification name in your TransferText command. But without
further information about your file, it's hard to tell if that's the
correct answer.

If the data is delimited consistently, this is the easiest way to
accomplish what you want, but as of yet, we don't know that. Exactly
what kind of file is it? If it's something like Excel, then it's a
snap. If it's a text file with a standard structure (like a delimited
file), that's easy too... it's just when you have an inconsistent
format that things get ugly and you have to resort to parsing the text
and using recordsets to append it to one or more tables...

I guess look up TransferText and TransferSpreadsheet in the help and
have a go at whichever one sounds closer to what you want. After a
successful import, you could move the file or delete it, but I'm
getting ahead of myself. You have to import it successfully first.

HTH,
Pieter