Importing your Text Files Into Microsoft Access Article

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Importing your Text Files Into Microsoft Access

By:Sezer Bozkurt

Most of us have documents spread over several type of files such as excel spreadsheet, text files, PDF’s and more. Consolidating these files into an organized Microsoft Access Database may seem difficult at first, but I will show you it’s quite simple.

Firstly you will need to know where your text file is saved. Once this is done open up your access database. If you don’t already have an access database open a blank database and save it onto your hard drive.

Once this is done look at the blank screen when the “tables” tab is clicked on. Right click on the blank screen and select “import”. Once this is done you will get a browse screen to select the file you want to import. Change the file type from access mdb to text file. Then the screen will show you all the text files that are available. Double click on the text file you wish to import.

Once this is done you will need to run through the wizard to determine the way you want the data from the text file to be organized. You will need to select things such as the delimiter (the character that will divide your columns), which fields you wish to import and the data types you want those fields to be. This is quite simple and should only take you a couple of minutes.

Once you click finish access will bring up a message saying your table has successfully been imported. If there were problems during the import process these erroneous records will be pasted into another table in your database. The default name of this table is “paste errors”. These errors are usually due to the data types you specified so it pays to go back over your import process and see what might be causing the problem. Looking inside the “paste errors” table at the erroneous records will give you a good idea of what went wrong.

Most of us have documents spread over several type of files such as excel spreadsheet, text files, PDF’s and more. Consolidating these files into an organized Microsoft Access Database may seem difficult at first, but I will show you it’s quite simple.

Firstly you will need to know where your text file is saved. Once this is done open up your access database. If you don’t already have an access database open a blank database and save it onto your hard drive.

Once this is done look at the blank screen when the “tables” tab is clicked on. Right click on the blank screen and select “import”. Once this is done you will get a browse screen to select the file you want to import. Change the file type from access mdb to text file. Then the screen will show you all the text files that are available. Double click on the text file you wish to import.

Once this is done you will need to run through the wizard to determine the way you want the data from the text file to be organized. You will need to select things such as the delimiter (the character that will divide your columns), which fields you wish to import and the data types you want those fields to be. This is quite simple and should only take you a couple of minutes.

Once you click finish access will bring up a message saying your table has successfully been imported. If there were problems during the import process these erroneous records will be pasted into another table in your database. The default name of this table is “paste errors”. These errors are usually due to the data types you specified so it pays to go back over your import process and see what might be causing the problem. Looking inside the “paste errors” table at the erroneous records will give you a good idea of what went wrong.

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