Text file Import Question

[cainemart]

We have an Excel program and imports bank text files and formats the numbers to be used in an Access database. So I suggested doing it in Access since the numbers end up in Access. But they told me that the same numbers were also used in Excel for some of their spreadsheet stuff... I was given the ok to do it in Access if I could tell them Access is more efficient than excel when it comes to importing and formatting info from a text file. So would Access be better? Or how could I figure this out without writing an import procedure in Access?

Thanks for reading this long post and thanks for any advice you pass.

cainebean

 

[scking]

Access is more strict when it comes to importing data because you can type it. For instance, a column of text data with the following values,

C24631
789652

are not ambibuous if you import them into Access because you would have to type it as 'Text' data. If you import it into Excel it will determine the first value is text and the second value is numeric. You can then export the table data to Excel and it would be properly typed.


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scking@arinc.com
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[JeroenNL]

In Access, you can define an export specification file in which you can define the EXACT way to export/import data from various sources including textfiles. That means you have more control over how to handle specific data found in textfiles.

Bye,
Jeroen

 

[cainemart]

I appreciate both of your comments. I guess when I was asked the question I was thinking which would be faster!

Thanks again.

cainebean

 

[JeroenNL]

If you have really large datasets, Access is probably faster than Excel because Excel isn't meant to deal with really large datasets. I would indeed suggest to use Access in your case. Bye,
Jeroen

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