Alpha4 to Access or Excel

**data808** · 10-19-2011, 03:15 AM

Does anyone know how to export data from Alpha4 to Microsoft Access or Excel? I'm not exactly sure which version of Alpha4 my company is using. I just want a step by step way to transfer the records from Alpha4 to a more modern and universal program such as Access or Excel. Any help is much appreciated. I already found the Export option in the Utilities menu. Just need to know what to do from there. Thank you very much.

**Keith George** · 10-19-2011, 07:55 AM

Good Morning,

From within either Access or Excel you should be able to open your DBF files that are in Alpha, no export is required.

Hope this is of some use.

Good Luck,
Keith

**Al Buchholz** · 10-19-2011, 11:10 AM

Keith's idea is good, but the latest versions of Excel/Access have removed the direct read of dbf files.

You may need to export to a csv file and have excel read the csv file.

**data808** · 10-19-2011, 04:08 PM

Ok thanks for the reply. When exporting to csv file, will it keep original data in Alpha4 intact just in case we still want to use Alpha4 as our primary program? In other words it wont take all the data to the csv file so that the Alpha4 is empty will it? I basically want to just copy the data to use it in another program to test run it first.

**Al Buchholz** · 10-19-2011, 04:10 PM

Originally Posted by data808

Ok thanks for the reply. When exporting to csv file, will it keep original data in Alpha4 intact just in case we still want to use Alpha4 as our primary program?

Yes, an export is a copy. Just make sure you don't name the output from the export to be the same name as the A4 database..........

And I know you have a backup prior to running anything like this.........