The Census provides Building Permit data in several formats. Make sure to get the Annual Data. Annual Data - Data tabulated for that survey year for each of four Census regions (NE, MW, SO, WE): Annual summary data - Annual data records for all permit offices. File Name - <Region><YYYY>A.txt, where "Region" is the 2-character abbreviation shown above and "YYYY" is the year. Example is SO2006A.txt.
https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/
Three monthly files are available for each of the 4 Census regions (NE, MW, SO, WE), current month data, year-to-date data, and monthly cumulative data. These are defined as follows:
o Current month - data tabulated for only that survey period. File Name - <Region><YYMM>C.txt, where "Region" is the 2-character abbreviation shown above and "YYMM" is the survey date; i.e. 0712. Example is SO0712C.txt.
o Year-to-Date monthly - summed data from the beginning of the year through the current survey month including late reports and corrections for prior months. File Name - <Region><YYMM>Y.txt, where "Region" is the 2-character abbreviation shown above and "YYMM" is the survey date; i.e. 0712. Example is SO0712Y.txt.
o Monthly Cumulative - monthly data records for each permit office from the beginning of the year through the current survey month including late reports and corrected data for prior months. File Name - <Region><YYMM>R.txt, where "Region" is the 2-character abbreviation shown above and "YYMM" is the survey date; i.e. 0712. Example is SO0712R.txt.
1. Navigate to: https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/
2. Click on: “ASCII files by County or Place”
3. Click on: “Place/”
4. Click on: “Midwest Region”
5. Right-click on: “mwYYYYa.txt” and save lik as.
6. Open the TXT file in Excel as Delimited with column headers and separated by commas.
7. In Row 3 paste the new column names.
8. Delete Rows 1 and 2 and save the TXT file
9. Truncate the MsQL table: aa_co_mu_bldgpermits
10. Import the Excel file into: aa_co_mu_bldgpermits
11. Run the scripts in: CO MU Import Bldg Permits