I need computer guru tech help

i am on the local fire dept in my hometown and we have a big auction every year. Well, when the auction began getting big, names and addresses of people coming to the event were being put into an old DOS operation system. we send out a mass mailing to the same people every year but the only way to get those names onto postcards is to print the names and addresses on premade sticker sheets and then peel the stickers and put them on postcards. I believe if the names and addresses were in MS access or excel, we could print the postcards with everyones names already printed to. We have close to 6000 names in this system and rekeying all names and addresses is our last option. Is there any way to take the names and addresses from DOS and convert to anything Microsoft? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! thanks.

12/5/2006 8:26:31 AM

how is the DOS file formatted? Try opening the file in excel anyways, excel is usually pretty good at importing non-excel files that have some consistent row format

[Edited on December 5, 2006 at 8:46 AM. Reason : .]

12/5/2006 8:46:20 AM

excel is pretty good about importing in data. I wrote a java program that had this sort of file output:

name age favortienumber
james 22 1
dan 20 99
mike 18 12
janet 21 33
Chad 11 33

i took the text file from that output and imported it into excel by specifying that the columns were seperated by spaces. excel then does the rest.

12/5/2006 9:43:55 AM

i will find out more information about how it is formatted in DOS. i haven't even seen the file but the older guys in the fire dept said that there is no way to transfer information from DOS to excel/access. i told them that i would find out about it. i will try to get the file and let yall know. thanks.

12/5/2006 2:20:30 PM

It really depends on the file and whether it's text (.txt) or some proprietary format (i.e. a program created it). If its text, it can be done, and probably by a 1st or 2nd year student with a programming background. If its proprietary, it depends.

[Edited on December 5, 2006 at 3:46 PM. Reason : .]

12/5/2006 3:46:21 PM

Try opening the datafile in TextPad. Might be able to search/replace your way to a usable file.

There's always http://www.rentacoder.com, jobs like this show up on there all the time, throw $25 at it I'm sure you'll get some takers.

-- Dave

12/5/2006 4:16:40 PM

If you get the file, and It's a simple conversion, I would be happy to do it for free. I have a good amount of experience doing simple (and complex) imports. tjjuggle at yahoo

12/5/2006 4:48:23 PM

http://www.rentacoder.com

comma was tripping it up for me

12/5/2006 5:27:31 PM