Project Description:

There are MS-DOS files, an Acess file and an Excel file attached. All will be described below.

I have very limited programming knowledge but was given a group of files created in 1997 that together make up a fully functioning very basic MS-DOS invoicing program. With this program you can view invoices and create new ones. . The only portion of this application that requires focus is the one accessed by selecting "View Invoice".

What I need to do is export the data viewable in this application to an existing blank formatted Access database. You will notice that the attached files contain 4 of such MS-DOS applications all bearing the same structure. I require the data extracted from all four of them.

There are two database tables that the data needs to be placed into. One is DocumentHeaders, which contains all of my customer-specific information that is contained with each invoice listed within this table. The other Access table is DocumentItems, which contains the actual products purchased for each invoice. Obviously, more than one product can be purchased on each invoice so there is a one to many relationship of one invoice number (the DocumentHeaders->ID field) per many items purchased for each invoice (the unique primary key DocumentItems->DocID field gets repeated per corresponding DocumentHeaders->ID field).

The attached Excel document lists which MS-DOS fields correspond to which Access fields. Any MS-DOS fields not listed are to be ignored and do not require migration to Access. If the MS-DOS invoice record reads "Same as Billing" by the billing company information, I would require the data from the SoldTo Access fields (listed on the Excel document) to be identical to those from the ShipTo fields of the Excel document.

So the data needs to migrated to these 2 Access database tables. However, I am left with a concern. Once I am presented by you, the programmer, with the database containing the extracted data, I will be merging it with an existing Access database of identical structure which already contains a lot of the same type of invoice data. My concern is that the DocumentHeaders->ID field is an autonumber primary key unique field. How can I arrange to have this field of the newly provided database continue where the existing database's identical field leaves off? Must I provide you with the existing database in order for this to work?

Thanks