How to import plain text into workable tables/cells?

[Xane]

I have several rather extensive text files (extracted from an antiquated
local database) that I wish to import into either Access or Excel as
functional databases.

So far I've had the best results importing into Excel, as this at least
manages to divide the info into several fields somewhat, although still not
nearly as well as I'd like.
Several elements get crammed together in one cell when I choose to import
seperately.

In Access, the results are even worse and I can't even manage to make decent
cells out of the info. Most of the time the info gets imported into one
column, or into a zillion ones if I choose space as a seperator symbol, which
I truly don't want of course.

I've tried tinkering about with both applications a bit, but can't seem to
generate moderately desireable results.
I'm gonna try now to improve the textual layout of the source text in Word,
see if that can improve the import performance slightly, but apart from that
I wonder what I can do to import the text into either Excel or Access into
proper, functional cells.

Please give me some feedback. Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

[Ian]

The old database would presumably have had some form of separator between
the text fields. Can you identify that as you separator? If it is a case of
having eg 2 spaces as the separator, perhaps you could use find & replace in
Word to change these to eg commas.

--
Ian
--
"Xane" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I have several rather extensive text files (extracted from an antiquated
> local database) that I wish to import into either Access or Excel as
> functional databases.
>
> So far I've had the best results importing into Excel, as this at least
> manages to divide the info into several fields somewhat, although still
> not
> nearly as well as I'd like.
> Several elements get crammed together in one cell when I choose to import
> seperately.
>
> In Access, the results are even worse and I can't even manage to make
> decent
> cells out of the info. Most of the time the info gets imported into one
> column, or into a zillion ones if I choose space as a seperator symbol,
> which
> I truly don't want of course.
>
> I've tried tinkering about with both applications a bit, but can't seem to
> generate moderately desireable results.
> I'm gonna try now to improve the textual layout of the source text in
> Word,
> see if that can improve the import performance slightly, but apart from
> that
> I wonder what I can do to import the text into either Excel or Access into
> proper, functional cells.
>
> Please give me some feedback. Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

[exceluserforeman]

As Ian said, separators are the ones to look for. You may have to inclue the
Consecutine sparators ie you may have commas and tabs or spaces and
semi-colons.

Expriment with it.

You could try my viewer. It will open just about any type of non-application
file (not access or excel

FileLocationDatabase.exe

It is written in vb6 so it is an executable file. It is zipped at

http://au.geocities.com/windsofmark


-- Mark


"Xane" wrote:

> I have several rather extensive text files (extracted from an antiquated
> local database) that I wish to import into either Access or Excel as
> functional databases.
>
> So far I've had the best results importing into Excel, as this at least
> manages to divide the info into several fields somewhat, although still not
> nearly as well as I'd like.
> Several elements get crammed together in one cell when I choose to import
> seperately.
>
> In Access, the results are even worse and I can't even manage to make decent
> cells out of the info. Most of the time the info gets imported into one
> column, or into a zillion ones if I choose space as a seperator symbol, which
> I truly don't want of course.
>
> I've tried tinkering about with both applications a bit, but can't seem to
> generate moderately desireable results.
> I'm gonna try now to improve the textual layout of the source text in Word,
> see if that can improve the import performance slightly, but apart from that
> I wonder what I can do to import the text into either Excel or Access into
> proper, functional cells.
>
> Please give me some feedback. Any help or ideas would be appreciated.