Trouble with importing delimited text file

[joanl]

Hi...

Please bear with my long explanation. %-)

I have a .txt file that was sent to us by an outside entity. I'm trying to import, but with problems. The delimiters it appears they've used is the optional hyphen symbol. When I try to import the file into Access 97, the delimiters then appear as the '¼' (one quarter) symbol. If I paste the symbol into the delimiter selection box, it seems like it doesn't acknowledge it... it just displays its idea of the new table as having one column with all the fields in it.

I tried the 'find and replace' on the text file to replace the optional hyphen symbol with something more Access friendly, but that seemed to take more time than I wanted (there are around 2900 records with 24 fields, so it'll probably take a while to change the delimiters)

Also, the users want to be able to just click a button to import the table themselves.

Any thoughts, ideas, and help would really be appreciated. Also, if this question would receive more attention in a different form, please let me know.

Thanks for your time!

 

[willir]

Hmmm

It is hard to say without looking at the actual table. I thing to consider is to see if you can import the text file into a spreadsheet first. The graphical interface may be for accommodating for the import.

Then import the data from the spreadsheet to Access.

Richard