Microsoft KB Archive/142795

= PRB: FoxPro DBF Opened/Saved by MacWord Alters File Type =

Article ID: 142795

Article Last Modified on 10/15/2003

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft FoxPro 2.6a Professional Edition for Macintosh
 * Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3.0b for Macintosh

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This article was previously published under Q142795



SYMPTOMS
If a Microsoft FoxPro table is opened and converted to a Microsoft Word 6.0 for Macintosh document and saved in Macintosh Word, it is no longer a FoxPro table. Further attempts to open the table in Microsoft FoxPro will result is the following error message:

Not a table/DBF



CAUSE
The FoxPro-dBASE converter used in Microsoft Word for Macintosh can't save the file back to the original FoxPro format.



RESOLUTION
Because the file is now a Word document with the same name the original FoxPro DBF file, it must be saved to a format FoxPro can read, such as a text file. The following methods show how to do it.

Method One: Append to FoxPro Table as a Text File

 * 1) In Microsoft Word for Macintosh, open the converted FoxPro table as a Word document by choosing Open from the File menu and All Files in the List Files of Type list box.
 * 2) Click somewhere in the table. From the Table menu, choose Select Table. This should highlight the entire table.
 * 3) From the Table menu, choose Convert Table to Text. Then select Commas and choose OK.
 * 4) From the File menu, choose Save As. In the Save File as Type box, choose Text Only.
 * 5) Create a table in Microsoft FoxPro for Macintosh by choosing New from the File menu. Select Table/DBF as the file type.
 * 6) Enter the appropriate field name, type, and width to correspond with each field in the text file saved in step 4.
 * 7) With this new table open, choose Append From...on the Database menu. In the File Type drop-down list, choose Delimited with Commas. Click the From...button and locate the text file created in step 4 above and hit OK. Then hit the Append push button.

Method Two: Use Microsoft Excel 5.0 to Read or Convert to the Text File
 Complete steps 1-4 in method one. Open Microsoft Excel 5.0 for the Macintosh. From the File menu, choose Open. In List Files of Type box, choose Text files. Open the text file from step 4 of method one.  From the File menu, choose Save As. In the Save File as Type box, choose DBF 4. This new file can simply be opened in FoxPro as a table/DBF.

NOTE: If you are using Excel 4.0 or an earlier version, check the Microsoft Excel manuals on the procedure used to save the spreadsheet file in a DBF format. Also, this step could be broken into another method. Instead of saving the file as a DBF from Microsoft Excel, you could save the file as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet XLS version 4 or earlier. This is because FoxPro cannot open Microsoft Excel 5.0 spreadsheets. Then in FoxPro, issue the following command in the Command window, with the correct path to the spreadsheet: IMPORT FROM "Macintosh HD:Excel:test.txt" TYPE XLS 

Method Three: Look for Backup .BAK of the Table in FoxPro
 Check the hard disk for the existence of the old table name with a .bak extension. If one exists, then in FoxPro, choose Open from the File menu. Select Table/DBF in the Type list box, and select the All Files check box. Find the .bak file, and choose Open. The data in this table will probably be old, but the structure should be the same.  This table structure can be used in place of step 6 in method one, or the text file can be appended directly to the end of this backup table by following step 7 in method one. If you want to use this table structure but start with an empty database, it is probably better to copy the structure to another table rather that delete all records in the .bak file. This way there would be a backup of the old data. After following step 1 in this section, type the following commands in the Command window: COPY STRUCTURE TO temp USE temp This will copy the structure to another table named temp and then open the table. From here, follow step 7 in method one to append the text file to this table. </li></ol>

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STATUS
This behavior is by design.

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MORE INFORMATION
This problem is most likely to occur when a FoxPro table is used in a Microsoft Word for the Macintosh mail merge. After the mail merge has completed and the user begins to close the documents in the mail merge, the user will receive this warning message:

Document 1 is a mail merge main document that is attached to a data source <table.dbf> that has not been saved. Do you want to save <table.dbf>?

<Yes> <No> <Cancel> <Help>

If you click Yes, the table is no longer a FoxPro table. It is saved as a Word table in a Word document. Word changes the file type to WGBN for Word from FoxPro's APPL, and it changes the creator type to MSWD for Word from FoxPro's FOXX. This can be checked by opening the file in Apple's Resource Editor, ResEdit. In addition, Word replaces the FoxPro file header with a Word header, so you can't simply use ResEdit to change the creator and file types. All attempts to open the file in FoxPro will result in the error message given in the "Symptoms" section of thie article.

Additional query words: VFoxMac FoxMac

Keywords: KB142795

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