VMS ASCII file import into Access results in garbage

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Guest

I have an ASCII file that originated on a VMS system. I have tried
transferring it to a Windows system using FTP, specifying type ASCII. I have
also tried reading it directly from an NFS directory. I get garbage when I
try to import the file into Access. I think that Access is treating an ASCII
file as Unicode. In Wordpad I can read the file just fine. In Notepad,
reading it via the NFS directory results in garbage, but the FTP'd file can
be read just fine.

Now the Access Import "Advanced" form has a button that I can click to
specify ASCII (it is defaulting to Unicode). When I do this, I can read the
ASCII text ok in the import wizard, but it still imports into the actual
table as garbage!

I'm interested in any clues anyone has to offer as I'm about exhausted of
ideas.

Thanks!
 
The first thing I'd check is the line breaks. Recent versions of Access
require text files to have the DOS/Windows standard CR+LF - Chr(13) &
Chr(10) between each record, and as far as I can remember VMS uses just
CR (same as Macs), or maybe just LF (same as Unix/Linux).

(If you don't know how to check the line breaks, perhaps the simplest
way is to open it in a hex editor: there are some free ones that can be
downloaded. A CR will show up as 0D, and LF as OA.)

Assuming that's the problem, the ideal solution is to get the VMS
priests to modify the output file for you, either by tweaking the
software that produces it or by piping it through a filter. Otherwise,
you can filter the file yourself (some FTP software has an option for
doing this, or there are some free Mac to DOS and Unix to DOS text file
filters on the web).
 
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