PRB: Importing MS Excel Spreadsheet Gives Field Names A, B, C

• Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, version 3.0
• Microsoft FoxPro for Windows, versions 2.5 and 2.5a
• Microsoft FoxPro for MS-DOS, versions 2.0, 2.5, and 2.5a

SYMPTOMS

Importing a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet into FoxPro results in incorrect field names. If the field names are designated as "Name", "Customer", and "Address" on the first row of the spreadsheet, they will show as "A", "B", and "C" in the FoxPro .DBF file.

CAUSE

By design, FoxPro will use the column headings, not a row of information, from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as the field names in the database created with the IMPORT command.

RESOLUTION

To work around this behavior, do the following in Microsoft Excel:

1. On the spreadsheet you want to import into Microsoft FoxPro, select all the cells containing information.

   NOTE: This should include the row containing the column headings.

2. Do one of the following:

       - In Microsoft Excel version 5.0, from the Insert menu select Name
         Define, and then type "database" (without the quotation marks) as the
         name.
   

         -or-
   

       - In Microsoft Excel version 4.0, from the Data menu, choose Set
         Database to set the range of the database boundaries.
   

3. From the File menu, choose Save As and save the spreadsheet as type DBF4.

4. Switch to FoxPro and open the DBF4 file; its extension is .DBF.