Linked Excel comment field truncating in Access

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gregg T.
  • Start date Start date
G

Gregg T.

I have an Excel spreadsheet that contains a column of
comments, some of which are quite long. I have linked the
spreadsheet to an Access 2000 database. Although the
Access linked definition specifies a memo field, the
content of the Comment column in Excel gets truncated
by/in Access. It appears that the comment is being
truncated at the approx. 255 characters limit imposed by a
text data type, but the data type is memo, not text.

Microsoft knowledge base includes an article on a known
bug in Access 2000 that causes this type of behavior upon
export from Access to Excel, but there appears to be no
discussion of the reverse taking place, for a linked
table. The KB article mentions that the problem has to do
with Access outputting in Excel 95 format, instead of the
current, more recent format.

Any ideas on how I can link my Excel file, and retain the
full length of the comment field values?

Thanks,
Gregg T.
 
Link your Excel file but then improt the data into an
Access table and see if that fixes it.

Otherwise move up to 2003.
 
Ken,

Thanks for the reply.

Are you saying that, after linking and then importing to
a table, that the linked file field will be corrected? I
need the table linked because it is a dynamic file that
changes on the Excel side. I was under the impression
that importing gives me a snapshot view, at the time of
imporing, that would not change as Excel is modified.
Have I misunderstood the difference between the two?

And will 2003, for sure, fix this problem?
 
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