Linking to data in SQL Server from a Microsoft Access database

Create a Microsoft Access table that is linked to an Excel file.

I’ve been covering the use of Microsoft Access tools to clean your Excel data for the past few weeks. Today is the final entry in that series, and our topic is getting the cleaned data back to Excel. To recap, my premise is this: Microsoft Access has lots of tools that can help you clean up your Excel data. I’ve covered many of them in the last few posts, including the find duplicates query, update queries and several useful functions. Here are links to the other articles in

Use MS Access to find duplicates in your Excel data

Use MS Access to clean numeric fields that contain text.

Use MS Access to clean phone numbers in your Excel data.

Excel data can be messy. Use MS Access features to clean it up.

Use an append query to add Excel data to an Access table

Microsoft Access allows you to quickly create forms for viewing and editing your data. One issue you may have run into with forms is that it’s easy to accidentally edit the data on a form with a slip of the fingers. Here’s the scenario: You open an Access form and are looking at the data. Someone comes into your office and distracts you, and you accidentally lean on your keyboard without noticing. Leaning on the keyboard causes data to be changed - the keys you accidentally p

Excel or Access? Microsoft has lots of great tools, and in most cases, it’s pretty clear which you need to use. If you need to write a letter, Word is your tool. If you need to create a slideshow, that’s PowerPoint. But often there’s confusion about Excel and Access. Since both can be used as database tools, which is best? The answer is: it depends. If you’re asking the question, you are probably already familiar with Excel, and you’ve probably already come across some of the