maybe some tips on a .csv query?

[dr_patso]

I have been using access lately to do some queries on a CSV sent to me.



Here is the process I take.

.CSV with lots of columns, 1st line is title, 2nd line is column headings.

Open .csv with excel, delete entire first row so 1st line is column headings save as excel .xlsx

create blank database in access and import excel file, (i get to check box for first row contains column headings)

I then create a query, and display only the columns i need, and go back into design view and do a VERY VERY simple query, "this" Or "this" in one column and a Like "*xxx*" for another and it gives me all the results I want.

I then generate a report, scoot it over to as wide as a page, print preview and export to excel again..

I open the excel file containing the report and copy and do a paste special RTF right into the body of a new e-mail in outlook 2007 (format that was asked for)... exporting report to RTF instead of excel created wonky not lined up reports, excel was the way to get this done

This is a very simple query and I was wondering if anyone had some tips on automating this so the end user could just select the columns they wanted to show, the search term for that certain column and generate a report.

[NTC]

In addressing the last item of your post; there really is not any feature embedded in Access today that is oriented to the user designing a report. (...that is to say - a user that doesn't know anything about Access....)

Out there are tricks where you overlay all columns that might be selected - and then toggle the visibility depending on what they want... but it is fundamentally slight-of-hand; and may not work with the other email copy/paste stuff that you described (not sure cause that info was a bit confusing...)

Really the essence of what you seek is the user selecting the info they need to see. And this is fundamentally what data mining is all about. The true approach is to build an sql statement dynamically based on the parameters they provide. And this is very do-able when you are comfortable with vba and building sql statements. But the end result is a query result - not a report. So the data is presented as a query result which is very grid/table style and lacking the layout features of a report.

Hope this helps,

[dr_patso]

I just think it would be simple for me to build a program,

well all the data ends up being RTF anyway..

I am fairly decent with computers and can figure out a lot of if I know where to start. maybe a mysql based program.

these CSVs are updated 2-3 times weekly so program would go a little something like this

open program > please select CSV (end user selcts latest CSV) would import CSV with line 2 as column headings..

please select columns to use. and user can apply simple like statements, or choose specific results, and run the query, and the query would just have to have the text formatted nicely.

[dr_patso]

also I really appreciate your help I think your previous post will help me..