[Qgis-user] open .tab

[Ramon Andiñach]

On 28/05/2013, at 05:20 , Ágnes Néray wrote:

> Hi All,
> I'm pretty new in the world of Qgis.
> 
> What can be the problem if I can't open some (MapInfo) .tab file? 
> Some of them was opened some not… I don't know what can be the reason of this.
> Could you help me please?
> 
> Agnes

Hi, 
Because it's a .tab file there could be a number of options.

Native Mapinfo tab files will open, but:
1. if there is more than one geometry then only one will will be displayed by QGIS (e.g. a file might contain lines and points, but QGIS only displays the points).
2. For some Coordinate systems (projections) there is are a few problems assigning the correct coordinate system in QGIS automatically.

If the .tab file is a link to another data source (e.g. an xls spreadsheet or a jpg image) then QGIS will say that this is not a valid data source - because it's expecting a native tab file. However if you load the linked data correctly, e.g. the jpg through load raster, then you should be fine.

Make any sense?

-ramon.