Part III: More-Advanced Access Techniques
614
Tip
The Manage Data Tasks dialog box includes the Create Outlook Task button to set up the import procedure as
a scheduled Outlook Task. This is a very convenient way to automatically execute the import process on a reg-
ular schedule.
Importing from an Excel spreadsheet
You can import data from Excel spreadsheets to a new or existing table. The primary rule when
importing Excel data is that each cell in a column must contain the same type of data. When you’re
importing Excel data, Access guesses at the data type to assign to each field in the new table based
on the first few rows of Excel data (other than column headings). An import error may occur if any
Excel row past the first row contains incompatible data. In Figure 17.5, the Age column should
contain all numeric data, but it contains a text description of the age of 49. This is likely to cause
an error during the import process. The data in Row 5 should be changed so that the entire col-
umn contains numeric data (as shown in Figure 17.6).You can import or link all the data from an Excel spreadsheet, or just the data from a named range
of cells. Naming a range of cells in your spreadsheet can make importing into Access easier. Often
a spreadsheet is formatted into groups of cells (or ranges). One range may contain a listing of sales
by customer, for example, while another may include total sales for all customers, totals by prod-
uct type, or totals by month purchased. By providing a range name for each group of cells, you can
limit the import to just one section of the spreadsheet data.FIGURE 17.5Access can import data from an Excel spreadsheet, but there are some restrictions.
This data will cause import problems