Chapter 16: Working with External Data ....................................................................................
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Server, Oracle, or even a text file. Access can move data among several categories of applications,
including other Windows applications, Macintosh applications, other database management sys-
tems, text files, and even mainframe files.
Ways of working with external data
Often, you need to move data from another application or file into your Access database, or vice
versa. You might need to get information you already have in an external spreadsheet file. You can
reenter all that information by hand or have it automatically imported into your database.
Access has tools that enable you to exchange data with another database or spreadsheet file. In fact,
Access can exchange data with more than 15 different file types:
l (^) Access database objects (all types)
l dBASE
l (^) Microsoft FoxPro
l Text files
l (^) Lotus 1-2-3
l Microsoft Excel
l (^) ODBC databases (Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase Server, Oracle Server, and other ODBC-
compliant databases)
l (^) HTML tables, lists, and documents
l XML documents
l (^) Microsoft Outlook
l Microsoft Exchange documents
l (^) Microsoft SharePoint
l Microsoft Word Merge documents
l (^) Rich Text Format documents
Access works with these external data sources in several ways:
l (^) Linking: Creates a connection to a table in another Access database or links to the data
from a different database format
l (^) Importing: Copies data from a data source, another Access database, or another applica-
tion’s database file into an Access table
l (^) Exporting: Copies data from an Access table into a text file, another Access database, or
another application’s file