a simple app, but having problem, getting to read for a custom file

trying to learn a bit about Vb, however time isn't helping as I teach full time *win2k and winxp* but I have never had a chance to learn VB.

Anyway to the point, I have been trying *more comparable to beating my head against a wall* to self teach myself vb. And I am in need of a small program which will open a custom data file and extract a few type of information, which are stored in a txt file and then pull an image from a compressed archive of grphics.

more indepth explanation:

The txt files saves files as such
†Name
Course§Description
course§Description

i am transfering my student files out of an old dos program that stored them this way, and there are around 4000 records in alot of .DTM files the txt file i am pulling the info from.

So what I would need is a way to to open the file and it would auto list each name in one block in the next block list all the courses and there description, both need to editable, and depending on the course it should be able to pull an image from a compress archive, i dont have a compress archive yet, or from a seperate directory i dont care that much.

i hope that sort of makes a bit of sense. What I am getting stuck on, is I can open the file but it errors or jut opens the entire file, i cant get it to read the seperator codes and pull the info in a usable way.

so If anyone has some extra time and can either help me write this, which I would prefer, or if someone could throw something like this together I would be more than gratefull, but I would like o have the source otherwise I will never figure out what I am doing wrong

i have included a snipet of one of the dtm/txt files to show the layout, alot of these courses are the same, but i need the ability to either select them from a list or add a new type at anytime, and the premade course I would have a small graphic to load with aroudn 40X40 size or so

my email is [email protected] this is the easiest wya to reach me and my corp email cant be read via the internet. Also this is for my personnal use, not for the company, if they want this they can pay someone else to write it, i just need to clean up my records and get some sort of organization going in my mess.

thanks

KC
Edit: I had to change the file ext from dtm to TXT to allow it to me uploaded

Try this on for size and see if this is what you are looking for or at least gets you started.

I included an option to convert the info to a database but you'll need MDAC 2.5 to use it.