Link Table Error

[Mike]

I am trying to link a text file into my database. However, when I open the
file up in the database, it has a #Num! under the DOCNUM field. All my other
numbers in the field are showing up. It seems as though after it reaches
2121196310, it shows an error. The next number is 3101196620 and shows errors
repeatedly until it reaches 2121196310 again. Thanks in advance.

Example:

DOCNUM DATE FROMSTORE TOSTORE DEPT1
2121196310 03/02/2009 2113 6220 63

 

[Jerry Whittle]

You've bounced up against a limit in Access. A Long Integer field can hold a
4-byte integer containing values from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. I do
believe that a Double field is about the same except for also holding
decimals.

You could change the data type to Text especially if you aren't doing a math
with the DOCNUM field. It could cause some sorting problems though unless the
data in that field always has 10 characters.

 

[Ken Sheridan]

It sounds like the DOCNUM column is being treated as an unsutable data type,
probably a long integer. As 'numbers' like this are really just identifiers,
often acting as an encoding system as with ZIP codes, credit card, ISBN
numbers etc, and don't have any ordinal or cardinal significance, during the
import process select Text for this column. You can save the specification
for future use if you need to link to this file regularly rather than on a
one-off basis.

Ken Sheridan
Stafford, England