Cyril N. Alberga said:
I'm after the data, if it is of interest. I went to the MS site, but it
claimed I didn't have cookies enabled (although I do -- I'm using
FireFox). The file is huge (about 1.18 Gb), so I feared that a "trial"
version wouldn't handle it.
I'm going to follow up the next response, the Access run-time, first, then
check the MS site again -- that is if it will let me in to look for the
run-time module.
You only need the runtime system if you're trying to run a complex
application with a bunch of code.
If you're looking to just read data out of the end of the file, every single
copy of windows XP (and vista) ships with the jet (access) database engine
included with windows. So, every copy of windows is totally 100% capable of
reading data from a mdb file. And, you don't need to purchase any software
to accomplish this goal (but the data has to go somewhere into some kind of
software to be of any use).
So, you can write a windows script (batch file) to read and open that file
without purchasing any software whatsoever if you wish.
Furthermore you can fire up excel and simply import the data also.
And last but not least get the person sending you the data to export it into
something that your end can accomdate. It's pretty stupid and silly for me
to send you an AutoCAD file without knowing that you have AutoCAD on your
machine ....right? it also is really stupid of me to send you all Microsoft
publisher file when you only have word!
If you don't have the right tools on your machine to do your job that
someone else is asking of you, then someone else doing somting wrong here.
I think the most easy would you fire up Excel, and use that to import the
data. However, even better would be to have the person send you the file in
a format that you can use (a csv (comma delimited)) file can easliy be
created by ms-access. In fact, later versions can even export data in XML.
The other possible approaches as mention to write a simple windows script to
open and read the file. However if you're in an environment that you can not
get people to send you files in a format that you have the right tools, then
it's likely a bad idea for you to jump into a world of windows and
programming and writing scripts to simply read some data that was sent to
you. (it not worth your time here to fix the lack of effort of other
people). However, if you are stuck, at least you have the of windows scripts
to open and read the file.
-
Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
(e-mail address removed)