The ol' 255. Is there a way for Access to auto split a table on import?

[tstoneami]

Anyone know of anything slick? I am being forced to deal with tables that are monstrous. I have my doubts on being able to split the source. That is to say, split the source prior to import. To clarify, it has close to 400 fields.

[orange]

It is rare that normalized table would have >255 fields. Can you tell us more of your situation? If you are importing from a spreadsheet or unnormalized source, it's probably advisable to identify your normalized tables, and import subsets of data to supply the normalized tables.

[tstoneami]

There are no normalized tables. The Quickbase application allows people to slam interfaces together without any normalization. The files are flat. Picture 9 massive spreadsheets with no cohesion, or real field naming structure.

[orange]

So where does Access fit? and why?

[tstoneami]

Access is a great reporting tool. I have been able to brute force some reports great, highly variable reports by addressing the flat data directly. Now, I am facing files with fields in excess of 400 fields.

[tstoneami]

ADVICE NEEDED: If you understand my dilemma I am forced to make multiple sub reports, controlling visibility in the sections, based on the existence of content of specific type. I do this in the format event. Oddly this is all working as hoped. Really well now. But I am in hell with having to deal with each field individually because of the structure.

MY THOUGHT(s): 1) Rename the pertinent fields with a prefix so that I can programatically generate reports. Pull all the pertinent fields into tag groups on the report and iterate thru them in the tag group. These would both happen in similar ways.

If either of the above thoughts seem more sane than what I have had to deal with, realizing I can't change structures right now, the question remains as to how to accomplish object creation so I can spit out columns of data.

Any input gratefully accepted.
t