In reply to balmybaldwin:
Cheers, that looks like an option, however, my tablet has no SD reader, only a micro SD reader, perhaps I need then what you have linked to and an SD --> micro SD reader adaptor in it with a micro SD card.
I'm reluctant to spend more without knowing someone somewhere has a tried and tested solution, but this might be the way forward.
The readers themselves which go via USB (suggested above) I am wary of as potentially coming up against the unpowered connection errors I got before, i.e. the tablet will not power them but they need power to be read from.