Export MS Access Memo field and convert Unicode

I have an Access 2003 database. A table has a Memo field and I'm having issues with getting that data out.

• Exporting that field to a txt or csv chops that field off (255 characters)
• Exporting as Excel gives me strange characters for linebreaks
• Appending to a mysql database via myODBC gives an error about "incorrect string"
• Using VBA with Scripting.FileSystemObject doesn't work unless you tell it to create the file as Unicode, which is okay, but then I can't get the file converted to something I can import

There are Unicode characters in some of my data. It's not a multi-linual database, so the only ones I can find are slanted quotes, probably copied in from Word. Dropping them is fine; the information in the fields will still be understandable.

Can I convert these Unicode characters to their (ANSI? ASCII?) equivalents? I've not dealt with encodings very much.

I tried playing around with iconv, but without knowing anything about the encoding, it didn't really help.

Right now, I need help on: - converting the characters in my database so they export non-unicode-ish-ly - OR, converting the unicode characters after the file has been exporting.

From stackoverflow

• Export to .xml

  wesgarrison : ... which still exports with the wacky leading Unicode character.

  Jeff O : Can you post this character in a comment?

  Jeff O : I can't get half credit for at least including more that 255 characters?

• The file created by Access/VBA is UTF-16. For some reason, there is a character at the beginning of the file that was causing the Ruby YAML library to parse wrongly.

  iconv to the rescue!

  iconv -f UTF-16 -t ASCII -c utf_file.yml > ascii_file.yml
  

• How are you exporting? Have defined an export spec? In Access 2003, this gives you a dropdown list with all the usual encodings (code pages), including Unicode UTF8. This is also how you define your memo field as having a length greater than 255 characters.

  wesgarrison : I'm writing individual lines to a text file with FileSystemObject and writeln(). If I were using TransferText, then an export spec would be the way to go for sure.

  David-W-Fenton : Where are you running your code? Withing Access? If so, I'd suggest you would be better off with TransferText, precisely because it handles the problems you're having.

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