How to get the data from fpt and dbf (FoxPro) files?

Question

The files .fpt and .dbf (made in Visual FoxPro 8) have the text (readable for humans) which I need to get or at least to see. But I can't do that. MS excel sees not only the text but also a lot of symbols which make no sense.

So my question is how can I extract the text from the files? Visual FoxPro 8 can't open it saying that soandso.fpt is missing or invalid even though I have tried to open the very file (soandso.fpt).

Is it possible to get the text from the files .fpt and dbf?

Solution 1

dbf2csv (which I wrote many years ago) can convert most dBase-family databases, including FoxPro, to .csv or .json format. It does handle FoxPro memo files.

It is free. It is written in Perl, so the source code is included, of course. You can download it here:

http://burtonsys.com/download/dbf2csv.zip

It is currently at version 10, dated 11/15/2012.

Here's an article about it:

http://1stopit.blogspot.com/2009/06/dbf-to-mysql-conversion-on-windows.html

Solution 2

You can use some tools for converting dbf files to SQL, such as PgDBF or dbf2mysql. I'm sure there are also some commercial tools which will help you with this.

Solution 3

Normally you should be able to get the data from the table (DBF) or the memo fields (stored in the FPT) using Excel and the query built in. Based on the comment of the "symbols" and the fact Visual FoxPro 9 cannot open the table, it sounds like you have run into corruption. There are tools available to fix the corruption.

Here is a site that lists a number of good tools:

• http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~TableCorruptionRepairTools

I personally use Recover.

• http://abri.com/recover.html

I have heard from others though that the CM Table repair is good too.

• http://www.cmstory.com/index.php?module=Pages&func=display&pageid=5&lang=en

Rick Schummer VFP MVP