Importing a Text File

[mcp6453]

Newbie question. I have a an ASCII file (.txt) that contains names,
addresses, and phone numbers in the following format:

Name
Address
City
State
Zip
Phone

Name
Address
City
State
Zip
Phone

Note that there is a hard return at the end of each line, and there are
two hard returns between groups. When I use Get External Data to import
the info into Access 2000, I cannot figure out how to tell Access that
the delimiter is a hard return. How do I do so, or better yet, how to I
import this data into a new Access database?

 

[Michael J. Strickland]

You probably should re-format the data (e.g. in Word) first.

1. Open the file in MS Word.
2. Replace (Ctl-H) each double paragraph mark (^p^p) with some character
not used in the file (e.g. "|").
3. Then replace each paragraph mark (^p) with a Tab (^t). This will be your
field delimiter.
4. Go back and Replace each "|" with a paragraph mark (^p). This will be
your record delimiter.
5. Save the file and Import to Access using the wizard.

 

[mcp6453]

You probably should re-format the data (e.g. in Word) first.

1. Open the file in MS Word.
2. Replace (Ctl-H) each double paragraph mark (^p^p) with some character
not used in the file (e.g. "|").
3. Then replace each paragraph mark (^p) with a Tab (^t). This will be your
field delimiter.
4. Go back and Replace each "|" with a paragraph mark (^p). This will be
your record delimiter.
5. Save the file and Import to Access using the wizard.

tHANKS

 

[John Marshall, MVP]

Just be careful that there are no empty fields. This will give you a fake
end of line indicator.

John... Visio MVP

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