Exporting a table

[Skyshadow5]

I am trying to export an Access 2000 (9.0.2720) table into a text file format. After selecting the destination and Save as type = Text Files, I select Delimited, choose ok, select Semicolon as the delimiter, leave the default "" as the text qualifier, choose finish and get an error message saying "Invalid argument." Am I missing an add-in or some other Access add-on? I have tried various combinations of delimiter and the like but always get the same result.

 

[BobStubbs]

I think your Access installation is damaged or corrupted in some way ... I tried this in my copy of Access 2000, with the same delimiters, and had no problems.


Bob Stubbs (London, UK)

 

[Skyshadow5]

I took the database home and imported the table into a clean db at home (again in Access 2000) and tried the export again but this failed as well. Maybe it is something about the table itself or the contents (13000 records) that is causing it as I know my home install has everything possible loaded. Oh well, will have to try the same thing with a completely different table and see what happens. Thanks anyway Bob.

 

[Skyshadow5]

OK, so I took the original table, exported it to an xls file, opened the Excel file, dleted out some fields and left just 50 records, saved the xls, imported that back into the db as a new table and then exported this new small table and hey presto, it worked? Back to the drawing board I guess. Maybe it was just a size problem.

 

[BobStubbs]

You could have a problem with an unprintable character etc in one of the records. I've seen this myself ... record 9,763 (for example) has an odd character in it, and that's enough to mess up the export.

You could try the (tedious!) method of:

-- Split the data in half.
-- Try exporting the two halves - one should work, and the other fail, if there's a 'bad character' in it.
-- Split the bad half in half again, and repeat the process.
-- After half a dozen splits, the data with the bad character in it should be small enough that you can inspect it visually.

At this point a good technique is to copy and paste into Notepad - this shows up most non-standard characters as black rectangles.

I hope this will be of some help.

Bob Stubbs (London, UK)