Ok, here is my problem. We have a barcode scanner that saves all logs as a .dat format. I need to import those records and print from the results. I tried to do a manual import the first time to get a schema file but access does allow me to select a .dat file. So I was wondering if I could select a dat file and save it as a txt file in access/vba.

There is no way to easy import *.dat files into Access. You must know internal structure of this file (ask dealer, or developer of this scanner, how it work with this file). Probably you must open this file in binary (maybe text) mode and then you read what you want and save it to DB).

Peko

So there is no way of using vba to change a file extension from .dat to .txt??

No, it isn't

Is the .dat file just a text file? If so, you should be able to import the file. You'd have to know how the scanner formatted the data, though: is it comma-delimited, tab-delimited, or maybe fixed-length?

 

Sure there is:

Sub CopyFiles(strFilesToCopy As String, strDestinationDirectory As String)

    ' Call with CopyFiles "C:\Temp\*.dat", "C:\Temp"

    Dim strSourceFile As String
    Dim strDestinationFile As String
    Dim strSourceDirectory As String ' "C:\Temp\"

    strSourceDirectory = Left$(strFilesToCopy, (InStr(strFilesToCopy, "*") - 1))

    strSourceFile = Dir(strFilesToCopy)

    Do While strSourceFile <> ""

        strDestinationFile = Replace$(strSourceFile, ".DAT", ".TXT")
        FileCopy strSourceDirectory & strSourceFile, strDestinationDirectory & "\" & strDestinationFile

        strSourceFile = Dir

    Loop

End Sub

Not sure what the text file will look like in your case, but you may find, as hashtlishnii mentioned, that the .dat file is just a text file.

HTH,

Bob

Also, if you'd like to just take a quick peak at a few lines of the file, you could use somethng like:

Sub ViewDatFileLines()
    Dim MyString As String
    Open "C:\Temp\Test.dat" For Input As #1
    Do While Not EOF(1)
        Line Input #1, MyString
        MsgBox MyString
    Loop
    Close #1
End Sub

That'll give you an idea of the format.

Bob