Access™ 2007 Bible

Chapter 17. Importing and Exporting Data

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Importing and exporting external data

• Creating import/export specifications

• Exporting to external tables and files

In Chapter 16, you discovered how Access 2007 can be used to link to external data sources and files. A link allows you to view data in Access, where the data is stored in something like an Oracle database, or an XML document. So, in the case of linking, Access is being used as an interface into data, which is stored outside of Access. In this chapter, you'll discover that importing and exporting are quite different from linking. An import into Access allows the creation of data inside an Access database, from some external source such as an XML document. An export from Access means you create something. For example, export to an XML document from data stored in an Access database.

Note

This chapter uses various files for importing, plus two Access 2007 databases: Chapter17_1.accdb and Chapter17_2.accdb. Both databases will be used for importing and exporting. If you haven't already copied these files onto your machine from the CD, you'll need to do so now.

Types of Imports and Exports

Before examining the processes of importing and exporting, let's take a brief look at the various options for importing into Access and exporting from Access.

Access can use and exchange data among a wide range of applications. For example, you may need to get data from other databases, such as FoxPro, dBASE, or Paradox databases. Or you ...