You can use the Access/Excel (DAO) connection. If you want to keep it as a .txt file, choose the Text option. You can also change the file extension to .csv and import it as an Excel file.
Maybe you can help with another question kind of related to the first. Basically I have some huge files I downloaded from the FDA as delimited text. I have moved them to Excel but they are too big to put on one tab, so I have about 13 tabs in one Excel file. I've gotten them into Crystal but each tab is a separate field. In other words I can't combine them into one report. Is there a way to combine them?
If it's something you do on a regular basis, add the .txt file as a "Linked Table". That way, when you get a new file, you can simply overwrite the old file with the new. Because the new .txt file has the same name and location as the one it replaced Access will never know that anything has changed and will simply provide the new data.
Access is a MUCH better product than Excel for this type of operation.
I am trying to do the same thing. The file I am trying to read is a tilde (~) delimited file. Using this information, I've been able to read the text file in to my report. But, 2 questions:
1) It comes in as one long string that includes the tildes. How do I get it to break the string out into separate fields?
2) The input record is chopped at about 60 characters. Some of the records may be very long. How do I get it to read the entire text string and not truncate it?
Not using Access. Just want to read the text file "as is". We have a bunch of old legacy data that was offloaded from our mainframe into these tilde delimited text files. Would like to read them directly and not have to go through Access.
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