importing into ms access

[hharriel]

Hi,
I am hoping someone can help me with an issue I am having with excel
and ms access. I have collected data (which are in individual excel
files) from 49 different school districts. All districts have used the
same excel template and populated the same 32 data fields (columns). I
created one large excel file from all 49 files which gives me a master
table of 60,000 or so records. I have tried to import this master
table into access to run some queries and as I expected, access
imported some of the records but not all, creating an errors table for
me. I suspected that I needed to go and reformat each column in the
excel mater table, so that the formatting for each record was
identical. For example I made sure that all columns that needed to be
text were formatted as text (i.e., f name, l name.), etc. More
importantly, I have a unique student identifier, that is 10 digits long
that is assigned to each record and I made sure that this column was
formatted as text so that I can link it to another table of student
information that I already have. When importing the excel master table
into access, it does not import a significant amount of the student
id's, leaving that information within a particular record blank.
Access will import other field information for records, so it is not
rejecting the record altogether. I have also tried linking the table
instead of reporting and when linked for some records, access displays
"??NUMBER" in the cell, again an indication that access cannot
interpret that particular cell information. I have also tried saving
the master table as a .txt file and them importing, but still no
success.

I am convinced that this is do to all the different "output
formatting styles" from reporting districts when they generated their
files for me using their own student information systems. Does anyone
have any suggestions on have to reformat/clean the master table?? Or
any suggestion on how to perform an import without having such a high
percentage of my records rejected during the import process?

Thanks so much.

[salad]

hh******@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,
I am hoping someone can help me with an issue I am having with excel
and ms access. I have collected data (which are in individual excel
files) from 49 different school districts. All districts have used the
same excel template and populated the same 32 data fields (columns). I
created one large excel file from all 49 files which gives me a master
table of 60,000 or so records. I have tried to import this master
table into access to run some queries and as I expected, access
imported some of the records but not all, creating an errors table for
me. I suspected that I needed to go and reformat each column in the
excel mater table, so that the formatting for each record was
identical. For example I made sure that all columns that needed to be
text were formatted as text (i.e., f name, l name.), etc. More
importantly, I have a unique student identifier, that is 10 digits long
that is assigned to each record and I made sure that this column was
formatted as text so that I can link it to another table of student
information that I already have. When importing the excel master table
into access, it does not import a significant amount of the student
id's, leaving that information within a particular record blank.
Access will import other field information for records, so it is not
rejecting the record altogether. I have also tried linking the table
instead of reporting and when linked for some records, access displays
"??NUMBER" in the cell, again an indication that access cannot
interpret that particular cell information. I have also tried saving
the master table as a .txt file and them importing, but still no
success.

I am convinced that this is do to all the different "output
formatting styles" from reporting districts when they generated their
files for me using their own student information systems. Does anyone
have any suggestions on have to reformat/clean the master table?? Or
any suggestion on how to perform an import without having such a high
percentage of my records rejected during the import process?

Thanks so much.

Unsure. What happens if you save it to a .TXT file; comma, tab delimted
file, and then import?

[cpow]

hh******@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,
I am hoping someone can help me with an issue I am having with excel
and ms access. I have collected data (which are in individual excel
files) from 49 different school districts. All districts have used the
same excel template and populated the same 32 data fields (columns). I
created one large excel file from all 49 files which gives me a master
table of 60,000 or so records. I have tried to import this master
table into access to run some queries and as I expected, access
imported some of the records but not all, creating an errors table for
me. I suspected that I needed to go and reformat each column in the
excel mater table, so that the formatting for each record was
identical. For example I made sure that all columns that needed to be
text were formatted as text (i.e., f name, l name.), etc. More
importantly, I have a unique student identifier, that is 10 digits long
that is assigned to each record and I made sure that this column was
formatted as text so that I can link it to another table of student
information that I already have. When importing the excel master table
into access, it does not import a significant amount of the student
id's, leaving that information within a particular record blank.
Access will import other field information for records, so it is not
rejecting the record altogether. I have also tried linking the table
instead of reporting and when linked for some records, access displays
"??NUMBER" in the cell, again an indication that access cannot
interpret that particular cell information. I have also tried saving
the master table as a .txt file and them importing, but still no
success.

I am convinced that this is do to all the different "output
formatting styles" from reporting districts when they generated their
files for me using their own student information systems. Does anyone
have any suggestions on have to reformat/clean the master table?? Or
any suggestion on how to perform an import without having such a high
percentage of my records rejected during the import process?

Thanks so much.

I also have had this problem before. I found that MSAccess looks at
the FIRST line of data in your excel to set the field types, so may
need to have a dummy record on the very first one so it sets the field
correctly in access.

Also I have been using the import and export features of
asap-utilities.com (its free) and it sure helps make it easier on
importing.

Later
Tex

[pietlinden]

what happens if you create an impor specification and then use it when
you run the import. Then Access doesn't guess what type the field is.
It just uses the type you told it to.

[person]

On 7 Sep 2006 05:17:34 -0700, "hh******@gmail.com" <hh******@gmail.comwrote:

>Hi,
I am hoping someone can help me with an issue I am having with excel
and ms access. I have collected data (which are in individual excel
files) from 49 different school districts. All districts have used the
same excel template and populated the same 32 data fields (columns). I
created one large excel file from all 49 files which gives me a master
table of 60,000 or so records. I have tried to import this master
table into access to run some queries and as I expected, access
imported some of the records but not all, creating an errors table for
me. I suspected that I needed to go and reformat each column in the
excel mater table, so that the formatting for each record was
identical. For example I made sure that all columns that needed to be
text were formatted as text (i.e., f name, l name.), etc. More
importantly, I have a unique student identifier, that is 10 digits long
that is assigned to each record and I made sure that this column was
formatted as text so that I can link it to another table of student
information that I already have. When importing the excel master table
into access, it does not import a significant amount of the student
id's, leaving that information within a particular record blank.
Access will import other field information for records, so it is not
rejecting the record altogether. I have also tried linking the table
instead of reporting and when linked for some records, access displays
"??NUMBER" in the cell, again an indication that access cannot
interpret that particular cell information. I have also tried saving
the master table as a .txt file and them importing, but still no
success.

I am convinced that this is do to all the different "output
formatting styles" from reporting districts when they generated their
files for me using their own student information systems. Does anyone
have any suggestions on have to reformat/clean the master table?? Or
any suggestion on how to perform an import without having such a high
percentage of my records rejected during the import process?

Thanks so much.

If you create a table in advance with enough fields, all of type text and 255 characters long, and
import by appending to this you can import almost anything and sort out the data types later.
If your data is already in Excel this should work quite easily.

[hharriel]

thanks for the feedback. i will give all of your suggestions a try.