Creating a MSDOS CSV File

I've got to admit I've never heard of either a MSDOS CSV file or an Excel CSV file.

Isn't a CSV file a, well CSV file? ie a text file where the data is comma seperated.

Try using SaveAs and adding an argument specify the file format.

Perhaps this.

Thanks for the reponse back Norie.

Yeah. I thought the same thing on the CSV file format. Using the command that you gave, Excel allows you to save it as xlCSV or xlCSVMSDOS.

I tried using that command but Excel errors out on me by closing down and then opening back up to "recover" the file that had closed unexpectedly. I am attempting to have this command issued for the Workbook in the BeforeSave event. It will also change the file name extension from xls to csv in the top and then sit there. It recognizes that file has "changed" and this requires me to use the drop down menu from the tool bar to actually save the file. I want to advoid this as the user community might not know what to do.

Do you really need the CSV format?

You mention Access, it's easy to import data from an Excel file into Access if that's what you need to do.

The issue is that the users are using one field (in the spreadsheet) as a comment field. They are exceeding the 255 limit. While Excel will recognize up to 32000 characters in th field, Access limits the field to the text limit of 255 when the file is either linked or imported (does not recogizne a memo field). Ideally I would like the comment field to be recognize as a memo field.

I thought that it would be easier to create a CSV file then just import that in and it should work. But no. (

Sorry I know there are limitations for this sort of thing,, but I don't know exactly what they are or how you would deal with them.

You say there's only 1 field being used, how would you work it into a CSV?

Personally if I was doing something like this I would be trying to find a different solution.

And that might actually involve using Access only, not Excel, Access and CSV files.

Norie said:

You say there's only 1 field being used, how would you work it into a CSV?

Click to expand...

If you put the spreadsheet into a csv file (with the first row as headers), you can create an import specification that will force the one column to be a memo field instead of the text field.


Another way of doing, (I am looking into this as well) is to use a schema.ini setup but I don't have it quite working right (it's new to me).

Norie said:

Personally if I was doing something like this I would be trying to find a different solution.

And that might actually involve using Access only, not Excel, Access and CSV files.

Click to expand...

The other issue of usiing Excel vs Access, is that the users have several worksheets that they are using and this one worksheet is the summary of about 5 different sheets. This one summary sheet is used to print off a report. The problem (it is rare but does happen) is when the report is printed and the one field is more than 255 it blows up. I am trying to find a solution to make that report not blow up on them. It all has to do with the field size.