I'm trying to do a select into statement that send the output to an excel file. The only problem I'm having seems to be that I can't specify the column names, I can only have select * into, I need select field1, field2... into.

It seems like it needs to have the file prior to running the statement the second way, but the first way (w/ *) creates it if it doesn't exist. Please let me know if you know of a way to tell it what fields you;d like to export.

I've done this a few times before using ASP. What I did was retrieved the data and outputted it to an Excel spreadsheet that was generated on the fly.

Here's a code example that should get you started. However, and this is extremely important, don't insert the Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel" line into your code until you're sure that you've got the output working. If you don't, you won't get any output and a cryptic error message that tells you next to nothing (as opposed to the cryptic error message from ASP that can tell you something if you know how to interpret it correctly.)

Use Visual Basic for Applications code ( aka a module ) to open the query as a recordset, cycle through all the data, and write a CSV file.

Thnxs for the replies but the way I said is the only way I'd like to do it, if it is not possible I know how to do it a number of other ways, I just don't want to have to rewrite all my code.

Create a view from the table with the columns that you wish to export and then do your select * thing !

That seems to be the quickest way to resolve it.

Thanks Zitku, I had just thought of that this morning, unfortunately I have to wait till tonight to do it, but your responds confirms I'm on the right track, thank you.

Just thought I'd let you know that creating the view worked, for future reference

Really? I was actually a bit doubtful it'll work! but anyway, good luck!

Yeah good luck

How is about php? We can use php to access excel files?

yes, PHP can easily handle actual excel files as well as tab separated excel files. Also there is this interesting work done by some russian guy paggard. (paggard.com), who sells his php excel thing. I bought it once long back dont really know about the current status.

-Amit.