linking to excel, my fieldnames from excel won't import correctly

[Ruth]

I am sure this used to so not sure why I now have a problem. I am linking an
excel spreadsheet, around 500 rows. Top row has column headings including
SchoolName, N1, N2,R,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13. These headings come from a
crosstab query in someone else's database that I cannot use directly, so will
need to stay as they are. The number headings like 2 relate to school years
and come out of the crosstab. Now when I set up the linked table, the column
headings show up correctly in the linked table wizard, but once I view the
linked table in access I get headings SchoolName,N1,N2, R OK but the rest of
the headings have changed to F7, F8 etc. This messes up the queries I have
already got set up to analyse the contenets of this table. I've tried setting
the excel top row values as text data type which has not worked. What can I
do?

 

[Chris O'C via AccessMonster.com]

Seems to me column names starting with digits hasn't been supported for a
long time, if ever. I'd change my queries if I couldn't change the source.

Chris
Microsoft MVP