How to use Excel VBA to extract Memo field from Access Database?

Question

I have an Excel spreadsheet. I am connecting to an Access database via ODBC. Something along then lines of:

Set dbEng = CreateObject("DAO.DBEngine.40")
Set oWspc = dbEng.CreateWorkspace("ODBCWspc", "", "", dbUseODBC)
Set oConn = oWspc.OpenConnection("Connection", , True, "ODBC;DSN=CLIENTDB;")

Then I use a query and fetch a result set to get some table data.

Set oQuery = oConn.CreateQueryDef("tmpQuery")
oQuery.Sql = "SELECT idField, memoField FROM myTable"
Set oRs = oQuery.OpenRecordset

The problem now arises. My field is a dbMemo because the maximum content length is up to a few hundred chars. It's not that long, and in fact the value I'm reading is only a dozen characters. But Excel just doesn't seem able to handle the Memo field content at all. My code...

ActiveCell = oRs.Fields("memoField")

...gives error Run-time error '3146': ODBC--call failed.

Any suggestions? Can Excel VBA actually get at memo field data? Or is it just completely impossible. I get exactly the same error from GetChunk as well.

ActiveCell = oRs.Fields("memoField").GetChunk(0, 2)

...also gives error Run-time error '3146': ODBC--call failed.

Converting to a text field makes everything work fine. However some data is truncated to 255 characters of course, which means that isn't a workable solution.

Answer 1

• Try Range.CopyFromRecordset to see if it works.
• Try using CStr(oRs.Fields("memoField")) and assign to Value2 of the Range/ActiveCell.
• Try making the memo field the last physical column in table. A memo field is read only when retrieved. There was/may-still-be an issue with memo fields that are not at physically at the end of a table.

All I can think of right now.