In Database Tour, you can easily import not very large structured data from clipboard into a table in your target database.

There can be different reasons for doing that. For example, you need to import the contents of a text file into the Access database, but the text ODBC driver is 32-bit and the Microsoft Access ODBC driver is 64-bit, therefore you cannot complete the task using the standard export/import means neither in the Database Tour 32-bit nor Database Tour 64-bit.

So, copy the source data to clipboard, open your target database and choose Tools | Import from Clipboard.... This invokes the interface where you turn the clipboard data into the table compatible structure, i.e. tell the program how the table fields should be defined.

Everything is simple when your data contain some separator between fields, e.g. comma, semicolon, tab etc. In this case, everything is done almost automatically, because the application can find the field separator and you only have to set field sizes, check field types and specify field names if the clipboard does not include them.

Let's try more complex case, where the clipboard data have a fixed-length format, i.e. each field has its fixed size (in characters), the same for all records.

Importing Data from Clipboard

Here are the recommended actions to define the field structure for fixed-length format:

  1. Turn off First line contains field name option.
  2. Specify the total count of the fields using '...' button.
  3. Select the first column in the bottom table and adjust its width in characters either in the box to the right or by resizing the right border of the column by mouse. In the box to the right, choose the correct field type. Repeat these actions for the second field, etc.
  4. Turn on First line contains field name option, if needed.
  5. Click the first column and check its field name in the box to the right. Repeat for other columns.

After you finished and clicked OK, the Import dialog appears. At the beginning, you can preview the defined table in the normal table look:

Clipboard Data Preview

After you click Next, you can choose the target table and some import options:

Import Target

And next, you specify the correspondence between the source and target fields/columns:

Import Target

After clicking Import, the data from clipboard will be imported into the specified target table.

See also