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588 Tim - January 25, 2002

Hi! I am looking for a way to find all zip codes within 10, 50 and 200 miles of a specific zip code. After I know how to do this for one, I would like to do it for all of the zip codes in the US and put them into an Access Database creating seperate tables for 10, 50 and 200 miles within a zip code. For example: The within 10 miles table will contain 2 columns, in one all of the US Zips and in the other Zips within 10 miles of the one in the first column, just like a relational db. If you know how to do this please reply. I need this info as soon as possible. Thanks, Tim

Answer:

First, I'm not quite sure if Access is up to the task. There are slightly more than 35,000 zip codes that MapPoint knows about. The area of the U.S. is about 3.7 million square miles, a radius of 200 miles contains an area of about 125,000 square miles or a little more than 3% of the U.S. That means for within a 200-mile radius around each zip code, I would guess that you will probably find another 1000 zip codes. That works out to a 35,000,000 row table. Not something that you probably want Access to chew on.

I think Gilles Kohl has responded to this question on the microsoft.public.mappoint newsgroup, with a fairly complete answer. There is no simple answer. This will take a fair amount of cycles to grind out the final matrix of results.

- Walt Cygan

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