Article ID: 104441
Article Last Modified on 8/16/2005
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Excel 2.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 2.01
- Microsoft Excel 2.1 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 2.10c
- Microsoft Excel 2.10d
- Microsoft Excel 3.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 3.0a
- Microsoft Excel 4.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 4.0a
- Microsoft Excel 4.0c
- Microsoft Excel 5.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 5.0c
- Microsoft Excel 2.2 for Macintosh
- Microsoft Excel 2.2a
- Microsoft Excel 3.0 for Macintosh
- Microsoft Excel 3.0a for Macintosh
- Microsoft Excel 4.0 for Macintosh
- Microsoft Excel 5.0 for Macintosh
- Microsoft Excel 5.0a for Macintosh
- Microsoft Excel 5.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 95 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 97 Standard Edition
This article was previously published under Q104441
SYMPTOMS
If a Microsoft Excel document contains a database with more than 128 columns and you save the file in dBASE file format, you may only save the first 128 columns of the database. When you close and reopen the file, the columns after the 128th column will be missing.
CAUSE
This situation occurs because the .dbf file formats only support a maximum of 255 fields per record in .DB4, 128 fields per record in .DB3, and 32 fields per record in .DB2.
The number of columns that are saved depends on your version of Microsoft Excel as well as the version of dBASE that the file is saved in. Based on your version of Microsoft Excel or dBASE, all of the columns of data may be saved, 32 of the columns may be saved, 128 of the columns may be saved, or 255 of the columns will be saved. The following table shows how many columns of data will be saved when the database is saved in various .dbf file formats:
Version
of Excel Platform File Type Number of Columns
-------------------------------------------------------------
All All DBF2 32
All All DBF3 128
4.0 Windows DBF4 128
4.0 Macintosh DBF4 255
4.0a Windows DBF4 255
5.0 Windows/NT DBF4 255
5.0a Macintosh DBF4 255
5.0c Windows DBF4 255
7.0 Windows 95 DBF4 255
97 Windows DBF4 255
REFERENCES
"User's Guide 1," version 4.0, pages 57-63
"User's Guide," version 3.0, pages 129-136
Additional query words: 3.0 3.00 4.0a 4.00a 5.0 5.00c 7.0 7.0a 7.00a 8.00 97 XL97
Keywords: kbprb KB104441
