Question

This is about a legacy Access 2003 database that I’ve inherited. There’s some code that links an Excel (97-2003) spreadsheet:

tdf.Connect = "Excel 5.0;HDR=Yes;IMEX=2;DATABASE="&strXLFileName
tdf.SourceTableName = strSourceTableName & "$"
CurrentDb.TableDefs.Append tdf

When I open the linked table afterwards, I see #Num! in place of numeric values in a column that is supposed to contain both numeric and text.

For example, in Excel:

Field1
H88
234
X65
432

Linked table in Access:

Field1
H88
#Num!
X65
#Num!

I’ve tried the following:(a) changing Excel 5.0 to Excel 8.0, which is more accurate for the format the soruce files are in; (b) importing using DoCmd.TransferSpreadsheet instead of linking.

The first still gives #Num!, while importing gives nulls.

Upgrading to later versions is not an option at the moment – there are a number of places within the code that use things that Application.FileSearch that require careful rewriting and testing.

Anyone know how to get Access 2003 to treat the “numbers” like they were text, too?

TIA!

Answer 1

Change IMEX=2 to IMEX=1 to treat all the values as text.

You can read more about IMEX at Connection strings for Excel 2007.