updating Access database from somewhat redundant excel files

[jillca]

I get weekly updates on a project in an excel spreadsheet that I need to
import into an existing Access database. Many of the fields have data that
is already entered that I don't want overwritten or changed in the database.
Basically I want the newly entered data to be updated. I use one particular
field in the database as the 'key'

Is there any straightforward way to do this? I am NOT a database person and
do not know VBA or SQL or any of the other query languages

I have Access 2002 SP3 and Excel 2003 SP3

 

[Jeanette Cunningham]

Jillca,
importing excel data into access is hardly ever straight forward.
The main problem is that the worksheet may have text and numbers in the same
column.
If you can be sure that the worksheet to import does not suffer from this
problem you might be OK.

Create a unique index on the table that the data will go into.
For example if you created a unique index on a field called LastName and a
field called Amount -
When you use File | Get External Data | Import

only records with a different combination of LastName and Amount would be
added to the existing data in the table.


Jeanette Cunningham