acces indexes on imported files

[ronald ossendrijver]

Hello,

Can anyone help me on the following issue:

I have a dbasfile, sorted in a specific way. When I
import this file in access, the original ranking of the
records is changed. But I do want to keep the records in
their original order / sequence.

Does anyone know how to achieve this? It seems that
access makes indexes and sorts records on this index???

Thanks in advance!

Ronald Ossendrijver

 

[Lance]

Hi Ronald,

Access is a relational database so the order of records
does not matter. You can sort them using a query.

Lance

 

[ronald ossendrijver]

Hi Lance,

Thanks for your quick answer! Thing is however, that the
dbasefile is sorted by an external application, and the
field on which it is sorted, is only temporary and is
deleted after the sort. So I cannot run a sortquery in
access on that field anymore, as it no longer exists. I
cannot change the external software and cannot create the
sortfield again. Therefore I need to import the file in
access without the order of records being changed by
importing in access. It seems to me that access sorts the
file during the importprocess on a code (zipcode) field
but I am not sure.
Do you know a way of avoiding this?

Thanks,

Ronald

 

[MCArch]

Ron,

As Lance indicated, in Access you can not predict the order in which records
will be stored. You simply must accept that and look for another method of
ordering your data. One simple means might be to number the records prior
to import. If they are in a text file, such as a CSV, that would be trivial.
You could also write code that would add a sequence number to each record as
it was imported. It would be best to not rely on an autonumber, since its
behavior can be unpredictable as well.