export to DBASE fomat from Excel / Access

[pmasters]

Hello,

I need to convert a spreadsheet into DBASE format.

If I SAVE AS in Excel i find that cell contents are truncated - inconsistently though, as one PC using office2003 will export only 10chars from each cell, but another PC using Excel 5 will export up to 40...which still is not enough.

I then tried importing into Access and then exporting out but receive an error 'Field will not fit in record'.

No cell in the spreadsheet exceeds 255chars - does anyone have any ideas how to resolve either of these issues? (Or know of a better way of converting XLS to DBF such that I retain my header row as field labels?).

Thanks

PAul

 

[dbMark]

Have you tried exporting to comma separate values (CSV) type? Then you can use dBase import capabilities to bring the data into a table from that CSV file. dBase can import other file types as well, depending on the dBase version.

 

[pmasters]

Thanks for the suggestion - Unfortunatley I am trying to import to DBF without actually having DBASE itself!

A customer of ours in Belgium has a Finance System which has a very rigid import facility - it can only import DBF files in a specific format.
I am trying to export financial data from our software for them to then import.
I am using Crystal Reports to create a datafile - but crystal's export to DBF also gives 'Field will not fit in record' (their support guys are investigating at the moment) so I thought I would try and work roundd it by going via excel.

 

[1oldfoxman]

I tested with Excel'97 and by expanding the column width in Excel then performing the Save As, was able to get 200+ character field widith in a dBaseIII version .dbf. Have you already tried this? I don't have Excel 2003 to test with.

Dennis

 

[BillPSU]

You are probably running into the 255 character per record limit in the text file. Many older software packages limited record length to 255 characters.

 

[MiggyD]

ODBC installed properly? Does it show Dbase format available?

Have you tried saving the data (as dbMark suggested) as CSV? then (if it's small enough) use NotePad to view it's contents? (if all seemed well) have you tried using ISAM.INI for the headers?

I'm still kind of confused, is the data in EXCEL? ACCESS? or a CRYSTAL REPORTs derivative? that is being exported to DBF format?
--MiggyD

 

[pmasters]

The data is actually starting life in an interbase database. I was then trying to use Crysatl reports to convert this to dbf, but due to problems I tried instead to go to via excel.

The most amount of data in any one field is only 60chars and the 'fit width' option didnt help.

I have however found that all is well if I use excel 97!

Makes no sense to me but at least its working now.

Thanks for all your suggestions.