File does not contain data???

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charles P. \(Pat\) Upshaw
  • Start date Start date
C

Charles P. \(Pat\) Upshaw

I'm trying to either link or import a very large (over 4GB) fixed with file
into my Access 2003 database. I've already linked a much smaller version of
the database but the large version gives me the error, "...file does not
contain data..."

I know the data is there - I can see it with my data conversion program.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Pat
 
Charles

I suspect you've received an ambiguous, mis-directing error message.

Check Access HELP for "specifications". I believe you'll find that 2 Gb is
the max size allowed. (of course, that might only apply to internal
tables...)

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP
 
Charles and Jeff,

I have a nasty feeling that the import and linking code was never
designed to handle files bigger than 2GB - not to mention the 2GB limit
on the size of a .mdb file.

Probably the only thing to do is to work at the text file level to munge
the file into something smaller and more tractable. Most humungous fixed
width files contain huge amounts of empty space; simply converting them
to tab-delimited can dramatically reduce their size. You can also filter
out any fields and records you don't need.

Also, humungous text files are usually far from normalised. Doing some
of the normalisation at the text file level can also help reduce the
amount of data that needs to be imported.
 
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