Census Bureau

Census 2000 Summary File 3 ASCII text data files


Technical notes about Census 2000 Summary File 3 Access template

July 25, 2002

Data item HCT033E003 was missing from Segment 71 in previous versions of the file structures. All structures have been updated to include this field.

August 07, 2002

The Access structure has been redone to include import specifications. The import specifications were missing from the previous version on-line. The latest version was created in Microsoft Access 2000. Attempts to save a copy of the updated file in Access 97 format with the import specifications have so far proven unsuccessful.

August 08, 2002

The latest version contains updated import specifications for the geographic file and the data files containing fields with decimals. The import specification for the geographic file has been changed from delimited to fixed length. Correct field start positions and lengths are now included. Data files containing fields with decimals are 01, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 72 and 76.

A technical note: Make sure that "First Row Contains Field Names" is not checked during the import process. Otherwise, the first record in the data file will not be imported.

August 09, 2002

The Table "Tables" appears in incorrect order. This was corrected by changing the field type of the field LineNumber from Text to the Numeric type Integer and doing an ascending sort on this column within Table Design.

August 20, 2002

The import specifications and tables for data files 06 and 07 have been updated. Field types have been changed from "Long Integer" to "Double" for fields whose lengths were exceeded by some values in the data files.

August 28, 2002

The code page parameter of the geographic file import specification was changed from Unicode to US-ASCII in response to some reports of the INTPTLAT and INTPTLON fields coming in incorrectly.

September 4, 2002

The latest version contains updated import specifications for data files 07 and 15. Field types have been changed from "Long Integer" to "Double" for fields whose lengths were exceeded by some values in the data files. The import specification for data file 07 was updated on August 20, 2002, however, this correction was not complete for those importing data file 07 for large states.

September 5, 2002

The latest version contains updated import specifications for data files 15, 16 and 60. Field types have been changed from "Long Integer" to "Double" for fields whose lengths were exceeded by some values in the data files.

September 9, 2002

The latest version contains updated import specifications for data files 59, 60, 61 and 62. Field types have been changed from "Long Integer" to "Double" for fields whose lengths were exceeded by some values in the data files. Also, "First Row Contains Field Names" was unchecked in the import specifications for files 59 and 62.

September 12, 2002

The field lengths for the first five fields in the import specification and table for each data file are incorrect. These fields are all text fields whose field lengths are listed as 255 characters. This makes each table in the Access 2000 database about a third larger in size than it should be. The correct lengths appear below.

FILEID6
STUSAB2
CHARITER3
CIFSN2
LOGRECNO7

We are investigating the best way to correct this in the Access 2000 template. It will probably be necessary to compact the database after re-sizing one or two of these fields at a time in table design to get around the "too many fields defined" error message. It is a good idea to do this before importing any data.

The table SF3GEO Dictionary was resorted by changing the field types for SIZE and OFFSET from Text to Numeric Long Integer and sorting OFFSET in ascending order.

September 16, 2002

The field lengths of FILEID, STUSAB, CHARITER, CIFSN, LOGRECNO have been adjusted for all tables except 06, 59 and 61. The import specifications have not yet been corrected.

Technical notes about other formats at http://www.census.gov/support/2000/SF3/

September 19, 2002

All tables with data items containing decimals were updated. All tables with data items with a width of more than nine were updated. The matching import specifications were also updated.

Tables with data items containing decimals
Table numbersData file numberNumber of decimals
P4011
H4561
H18562
H24571
H27581
H070601
H095611
HCT40A - HCT40I721
HCT48A - HCT48I761

Tables with data items with a length greater than nine (max size = 15)
Table numbersData file number
P333
P546
P576
P676
P68 - P757
P787
P817
P837
P867
P917
P153A - P153I15
P158A - P158I16
PCT3627
PCT3727
PCT4128
PCT4328
PCT4829
PCT5431
H2557
H2858
H2958
H4659
H5859
H6159
H6459
H6559
H6659
H7860
H7960
H8160
H8360
H8660
H8961
H9261
H9361
HCT1367
HCT1467
HCT1568
HCT1668
HCT2169
HCT38A-HCT38I72
HCT43A-HCT43I73
HCT46A-HCT46I75


Access 1997

September 10, 2002

The original Census 2000 Summary File 3 template was created in Microsoft Access 2000. An Access 97 version of the template will be placed back on-line shortly. This template will not contain any import specifications. These are lost when exporting from Access 2000 to a prior version. Users will need to create their own import specification for the geographic file (because it is a fixed length text file that is not delimited) or import it from the Summary File 1 Access 97 template.

dBase 5

The dBase 5 version of the Census 2000 Summary File 3 structures have incorrect field lengths. All text fields are 255 characters and all numeric fields are 20 characters with five decimal places. This causes these files to take up much more disk space than they otherwise would. This problem is related to the increased difficulty of going from FoxPro, the original file format, to Access 2000, as opposed to Access 97, to dBase 5. There are no plans to update this version of the structures. They are provided on an as-is basis.



Electronic Products Development Branch
Administrative and Customer Services Division
U.S. Census Bureau

Last Updated: Thursday, 19-Sep-2002 18:07:04 EDT