Automatically Exporting Each Record To Separate Text Files

Hi all,

I've seen a lot of repeated questions from newbies about exporting to text, but so far I haven't come across a scenario like mine. Apologies if I've overlooked something.

I'm using Access 2003 and I have a database that contains a record for each article that appeared in a certain newspaper over the last 30 years (~70,000 records). Each record has a field for year, month, issue, page, title, and text. The text field contains multiple lines of HTML as well as the text of the article itself -- the program designed for viewing these articles calls on this field to create an html document that resembles the original newspaper page in the GUI.

What I would like to generate is a separate .TXT file for each article containing just the text of that article and a filename system that identifies each file by year, month, page, and possibly title (i.e., about 70,000 separate text files). I'm not sure if I want the title within the document or just in the filename, but I'm assuming that wouldn't be difficult to change.

In other words, I'm trying to work backwards, reconstructing the text files that the person who made the database probably has sitting on a disk somewhere (but I don't have access to).

I've read about using the TransferText method, setting up an export spec and looping it in VBA, etc., but the closest solution appears to be Microsoft's page on exporting records to separate HTML files (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/HA010345961033.aspx), which mentions: "You can create a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) program that enumerates through the record set and uses the PRINT statement to output each record as a separate HTML file." After doing this I guess I would batch convert from HTML to TXT. Unfortunately I am new to Access and don't know VBA.

Can anyone provide any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jim