Exporting data from Word to Access (1 Viewer)

[davegillian]

I have devised a Word form that will be sent out to 100s of people, completed and returned.

I can currently export the data from Word to Access by going to OPTIONS and SAVE then checking the "Save data only for forms" box and then saving the file as a txt file. This txt file is a linked table in my database and an append query copies the data into my main customer table.

The problem I have is that everytime I export a word document it overwrites the txt file. I therefore have to open the word document, save data as txt file and run the append query before I can process the next form...

1.This is very time consuming
2.This job will be passed on and I don't trust users to follow a series of steps and get it right!!

Does anybody know a better way of getting this data into Access?

Cheers,

Dave

 

[ghudson]

Why not use Excel and import the files into Access?

What ever you use... When the text file is created you need to add a date and time stamp to the file name. Say you want the file name to always be prefixed with "ImportFile". Then you just need to append the date/time stamp to the file name. Like this...

X = "ImportFile_" & Format(Now(),"yyyymmddhhnnss" & ".txt"

Then automate the importing to look for all files that begin with "ImportFile". The odds of two or more people creating their text file at the exact second is pretty slim.