Tables on the Internet (1 Viewer)

How do I post a table on the internet in .txt format so users of my database can import it into their Access database?

I am guessing that I use the transfertext command, but it just doesn't work. Do I need to use an IIS server for a .txt file?

I uploaded it to my website, and went to "Get external data" and typed in the URL where it can be viewed, but all I got were errors. Again, do I need an IIS server, perhaps? I'm using an HTTP site...should it be an FTP?

I'd appreciate any help on this.

I'm using Access XP (2002)

Thanks

shadow9449 said:

How do I post a table on the internet in .txt format so users of my database can import it into their Access database?

I am guessing that I use the transfertext command, but it just doesn't work. Do I need to use an IIS server for a .txt file?

I uploaded it to my website, and went to "Get external data" and typed in the URL where it can be viewed, but all I got were errors. Again, do I need an IIS server, perhaps? I'm using an HTTP site...should it be an FTP?

Click to expand...

Ok, it's been 4 years since I asked this question and no one has answered. In case it helps anyone else, I've just found this tool that does exactly what I need:

http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html

I'm posting the solution just in case it helps anyone else.

SHADOW

Erm, wget is for *nix environment; were you able to get it run without Cygwin support?

Banana said:

Erm, wget is for *nix environment; were you able to get it run without Cygwin support?

Click to expand...

You bet I was. It's just a small file that you put in the directory that you want to download the file to and call it with the URL. Right from the page I linked to:

Runs on most UNIX-like operating systems as well as Microsoft Windows

SHADOW

That's cool. Will have to remember that.

Banana said:

That's cool. Will have to remember that.

Click to expand...

I'm glad it helped someone. I wish I had known this 4 1/2 years ago when I was looking for the solution.

My situation is that I have hundreds of people using my application all over the country. When I receive updates to manufacturer product prices and codes from the manufacturers, I post them to my website for people to download. In the past, the responisbility of the user was to check my website to see if there are new products to download.

The way the download works now is I put the catalogues (which I receive in Excel) as a text file packaged into an exe using one of those installer programs. The user clicks the cute icon on my website and gets the warning issued by the web browser. When they accept, the installer takes the text file and puts it in a known temporary location which is imported when they turn the program on.

Now, I can have the program more proactive. Wget can download a file (either a txt or a small mdb with the appropriate table) that will show when the most recent catalogue updates have occurred. If one or more are out of date, the user will receive a message when launching the application. If they want to download it, again, wget can grab the appropriate file. This will be a big benefit to the users over having to check the website by signing on to check or finding out the hard way that you are selling a product that no longer exists or you're charging the wrong price because you didn't happen to check the website frequently enough.

This functionality can be extended to ALL kinds of things such as making announcements when people turn on their program or even forcing a kill switch that will disable a program if someone doesn't pay their bill

SHADOW

One little gotcha that wasted about 4 hours of mine tonight:

When called from a command prompt, wget will put the downloaded file into the folder where the wget.exe resides. HOWEVER, call wget from Access using a Shell command and it will force the output into the "Default Database Directory". I even created a little application using VB that calls the shell and then I called that application from Access and it STILL forced it into My Documents! What I had to do in the end to get this thing to work was to programatically force the default folder using Application.SetOption "Default Database Directory", C:\wherever to get this to work.

I'm posting this in case it saves anyone else hours of frustration.

SHADOW