MS Access Error 3436 in File. Failure creating File.

[BenCasey]

I started to receive "Error 3436 in File. Failure creating File" whilst using the DoCmd.TransferSpreadsheet acExport function from within Access 2010.

I saw a lot of "advice" across the net going off in all directions (eg Disk Space, corrupted DB, etc) but none that I saw mentioned the fact that Windows itself will prohibit invalid characters in the exported file name. Have a look here for some of the suggestion http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums ... error-3436

In my case, the tables I was exporting had table names which incorporated dates and times. These include a "\ / : *", etc.
These (and other characters) are not allowed in a Windows file name so you need to be aware of this when exporting such tables.

If you get these errors in the future, before you start looking all over your system for possible causes, you may want to step through the code and see exactly what the exported table name is. Then copy the name and try and create the file name manually and see if Windows takes exception to the name (ie, on your disk drive, r/click New. Select Text Document, Overwrite the default name with the file name you are trying to write to and see what Windows says about it).

[HansV]

Thanks for this tip!

[Rudi]

Thanks Ben. Good tip