Exporting repeating fields

[dawnd3]

Hi there, I am trying to get data out of File Maker Pro 5.5 so that I can bring it into an Access database. However, I am not sure how to best export it so that I can easily work with the repeating fields.i.e Children. When I export as tab or comma delimited it does not separate each child's name for a particular record, instead it keeps in one field with a small square between each name. I am not sure what this symbol is so I can not use text to columns in Excel to separate. Any ideas would be great.

Thank you,

Dawn

http://www.calliopeconsulting.net

 

[Whonnoci]

Dawn - the "box" character is ASCII 29. There are several ways to solve your problem but the easiest way is to create a calculated field concatinating the contents of the repeating field - separating them with a unique delimiter that is unlikely to be used in data input (for Windows pcs I use the pipe character beneath the backspace key) - GetRepetition(Rfield1, 1) & "|" & GetRepetition(Rfield1, 2) & "|" & GetRepetition(Rfield1, 3) & "|" & GetRepetition(Rfield1, 4). Export in tab format but instead of exporting the contents of Rfield1 use the calc field. Tell Excel to use the tab and pipe as delimiters.
Bill