Works: Field Names Are Lost or Truncated When You Save File as dBase

When you save a Microsoft Works database file in dBASE III or dBASE IV format, the following changes occur:

• Field names longer than 10 characters are truncated.
  
  
• If the first 10 characters of 2 or more field names are identical, some field names are lost.
  
  
• If the dBASE file is opened again in Works, some fields that are displayed in Form view are not visible in List view.

This behavior occurs because of limitations in the dBASE file format.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

The following example illustrates typical field names from a Works database: If you save the database in a dBASE III or dBASE IV file format, and then open the dBASE file again in Works, the field names are displayed as follows in Form view: Because the first 10 characters of the fields "Address Line 1" and "Address Line 2" are the same, all fields after the "Address Line 1" field are changed to a generic field name.

If you switch to the List view in Works, you see only the following three fields, and you are unable to gain access to any of the data in the missing fields while in List view: To gain access too the data again in List view, save the dBASE file in one of the following formats, and then open the file in Works: