J
John Faughnan
Tip on importing from Excel into Access.
When linking or importing from Excel into Access 2003, Access insists
on assigning data types. Often it gets the assignment wrong. A
spreadsheet that contains both text and numeric data in a column gets
labeled as "numeric" when the first few rows are numeric.
Unlike when importing from most data sources, one cannot override
these defaults. Likewise changing the cell formats in Excel seems to
have no impact.
The only workaround I've found is to add a row just below the column
title row of the spreadsheet consisting of the string "DeleteMe"
repeated in every column.
Access now treats everything as text. Once I've done the import I
delete this row and redefine columns as needed.
I'm sure there's an easier fix, this seems so silly I'm sure I'm
missing something basic. Anyone know of one?
john
(e-mail address removed)
meta: jfaughnan, jgfaughnan, Access, Excel, Microsoft, import, link,
data type, datatype, assignment, wizard
When linking or importing from Excel into Access 2003, Access insists
on assigning data types. Often it gets the assignment wrong. A
spreadsheet that contains both text and numeric data in a column gets
labeled as "numeric" when the first few rows are numeric.
Unlike when importing from most data sources, one cannot override
these defaults. Likewise changing the cell formats in Excel seems to
have no impact.
The only workaround I've found is to add a row just below the column
title row of the spreadsheet consisting of the string "DeleteMe"
repeated in every column.
Access now treats everything as text. Once I've done the import I
delete this row and redefine columns as needed.
I'm sure there's an easier fix, this seems so silly I'm sure I'm
missing something basic. Anyone know of one?
john
(e-mail address removed)
meta: jfaughnan, jgfaughnan, Access, Excel, Microsoft, import, link,
data type, datatype, assignment, wizard