Importing FoxPro free table, getting around "the field is too small to accept.." error

M

MyHairIsAlmostGone

I have been exporting DBF files from a 3rd party application, then importing
these into Access. For most of them, I can simply use the "File-->Get
External Data-->ODBC-->Visual FoxPro Driver-->Free Tables method. For one
table specifically, though, I get the "the field is too small to accept the
amount of data you attempted to add. Try inserting or pasting less data."
error, and cannot import the DBF. For a long time, I've been getting around
this by exporting that specific table as an Excel file from the 3rd party
application, because Access imports the Excel file just fine for some
reason. However, we have hit the record limit of Excel, so now the whole
table doesn't export to Excel. So I need to SOMEHOW get this DBF imported
into Access. I can only export it from the 3rd party application as a DBF
file or an XL Spreadsheet.

Is there any way to:

1) programmatically specify which fields are to be imported into Access from
this DBF using the Visual FoxPro driver? I'm thinking if I can figure out
which field is causing the issue, I can just import around it, as I'm
POSITIVE it's not the fields I actually make use of once the import is done

OR

2) Work some kind of VBA or vbscript magic on the DBF file to remove the
problem field(s) and its data from the DBF file before importing into Access
(I did a similar thing to an XML file that had illegal characters, so I used
VBA to read the file to memory, replace illegal characters, THEN import the
file)

OR

3) Some other thing I haven't thought of?

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated; I've built a pretty massive
bunch of complex reporting and data manipulation around these tables, and
this one is critical to the usefulness of the whole shebang.

Thanks for any help, and for reading.



--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: (e-mail address removed) ---
 
S

Steve Sanford

I had been working on converting a Clipper database (using x-Base files) to
Access. To import the data from the DBF filed, I just linked to them.

From help:

Data sources you can import or link
------------------------------------------
dBASE - III, IV, and 5; and 7 (Linking requires updated ISAM drivers
available from Microsoft Technical Support)


So instead of going the long way (exporting DBF files from a 3rd party
application, then importing these into Access), I would try linking to the
DBF file and using an append query to get the data from the fields you need.
Or write code to read the linked fields and write to the access table.


HTH
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top