saving an access report as a txt file

[Dataman]

I have an Access 2000 database file that is being used in access 2003.
Everything works fine except when you try to export a report to a txt file
the file cuts off lots of data making it useless. I have tried all 4 formats
with the same reult. Yet if the same report is exported in Aceess 2000 it
works fine. What am I missing or not setting up for?

 

[Marshall Barton]

I have an Access 2000 database file that is being used in access 2003.
Everything works fine except when you try to export a report to a txt file
the file cuts off lots of data making it useless. I have tried all 4 formats
with the same reult. Yet if the same report is exported in Aceess 2000 it
works fine. What am I missing or not setting up for?

You are lucky you ever got that to work. Reports are
GRAPHIC formatted inages which can not be represented in a
text file. The best you should be able to do by exporting a
report to a text file is get a file with the report's data
partially formatted.

With that in mind, you should be trying to export the
report's record source query using the Format function where
needed to format individual fields.

 

[Dataduck]

Unfortunately I did not design this and totally agree with you. The problem
is this is the way the emplyees were trained and have been doing these
reports up to when they upgraded to MSAccess 2003 In Access 2000 they are
able to create proper txt files which they then convert to csv files for
uploading into the customers data storage. I would never do that but am
trying to assist with what they have.

 

[Dataduck]

I have a snapshot of the two reports for comparison but I am new at this and
not sure how to send the word document for viewing. If you could help it
would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Dataduck]

Just confirmed with employee that when they export the file in 2000 it does
not ask for any formating info and when you try to import this file back into
excel it sets up to mark lines etc as it alway has in the past. But in 2003
it cuts off data in any of the 4 formats.

 

[Marshall Barton]

Just confirmed with employee that when they export the file in 2000 it does
not ask for any formating info and when you try to import this file back into
excel it sets up to mark lines etc as it alway has in the past. But in 2003
it cuts off data in any of the 4 formats.

As I said before, that kind of garbled result is not
unexpected. The fact that it appeared to work at some point
is not an indicator that there is a way to make it work
reliably. The concept just does not hold water and I seem
to remember from somewhere that because of all the problems
with it, the feature has finally been removed in version
2007 or 2010 (along with the send a report to Excel
feature).

The reliable alternative is to export a query with the same
data as the report. You may need to use a button on a form
or a custom tool/menu bar item instead of the (non working)
built in feature.

 

[Dataduck]

The problem with a query is it appears as a single row for a record and the
customer has always demanded 2 rows. It works perfectly every time in Access
2000 so there must be a formatting issue within Access 2003. I have tried
the steps used to create the files for the customer and it works every time
in Access 2000 but never in 2003.

 

[Marshall Barton]

The problem with a query is it appears as a single row for a record and the
customer has always demanded 2 rows. It works perfectly every time in Access
2000 so there must be a formatting issue within Access 2003. I have tried
the steps used to create the files for the customer and it works every time
in Access 2000 but never in 2003.

Well, you can believe whatever you want, but good luck
finding a way to make it work in all situations.

The way to get a query to put each record on two lines is
something like:

SELECT 1 As Line, tbl.fldA, tbl.fldB
FROM tbl
UNION ALL
SELECT 2 As Line, tbl.fldC, tbl.fldD
FROM tbl
ORDER BY 1