Dbf Errors

[Surjer]

Does anyone know how to import a *.dbf IV file into access - I keep getting errors that it can't find the file that I am picking!

Thanks,
Jerry

 

[FoFa]

may not be true, with DBF files there maybe an associated .IDX file (index?) and it might not be able to find that, not being a Xbase expert it may even be something else, but I bet it is some kind of associated file it is looking for, or it maybe the wrong version of .DBF also, you maybe using III and it is a IV (as an example).

 

[Surjer]

Hmmmm

You might be on the right track. The DBF is coming from an Arcview Shapefile which does use IV, Excel opens it fine but maybe since Access is so much more powerfull it is getting confused with the versioning or something like that -

Ohh Well,

I guess I will just stay away from access on this one and wright everything in Avenue?

Thanks for your time,
Jerry

 

[Pat Hartman]

You may not have all the import filters installed for Access. Try going back to the installation CD and reinstalling them.

If this is a one-time conversion effort, you could use Excel as a mid-station. Import into Excel and then import into Access from Excel.

 

[Surjer]

Excel

I went through excel in the beginning and started running into problems. If I had a field called "FEDIRS1" and it was null the whole table through - Excel would drop the field completely. This wouldn't be such a big deal its just I have like 70+ fields!

 

[Pat Hartman]

You still didn't say if this is a one time event or you need to be able to do this import on an on-going basis. You can manually work around a lot of stupid stuff for a one-time import that you would actually need to debug if you needed a smooth automated procedure. I haven't seen this problem, but then I've never imported a dBase IV file into Excel. If Excel drops all null columns, just add them back after you import the data into Access.

 

[Surjer]

Sorry for Delays

OK-
It is a potential on going process - I think though now I have worked around it by staying away from access-

I figured out a way to do all the database manipulation outside of access and actually just eliminated access for this particalar project...

ESRI Arcview uses DBF IV databases.
Arcview also provides tools for querying and calculating values to populate that DBF

My problem was that I am not so familiar with "Avenue" which is ESRI's programming language but I am familiar with VBA -

So the solution is to use ESRI's Avenue scripting to do all of the data manipulation as apposed to using Access to do it..

I guess its the smart thing anyway to use the least amount of Softwares to do 1 job...

But anyways there are a ton of DBF's that it would have to be done on........

Thanks for your input -

Its something that I want to figure out though... Why it would drop null value fields and truncate values even if you save it as an Excel Sheet????

Thanks,
Jerry