Converting or using Access as a front end for Excel

[jacko311]

I have a fairly large Excel spreadsheet and I realized that it would be much more user friendly if I could convert it to an Access database, but I dont have a clue where to start. Can anyone give me advise as to where I should start?

[NTC]

you can either import the data into an Access table.....

or you can link to it....

linking makes sense if the excel sheet must live on and you will be making changes to the data it contains...

but if you want to get off excel and go Access - then you want to import it.

just look up Import External Data when in Access...it is pretty simple...

[jacko311]

Thank you very much for the reply. This spreadsheet has multiple sheets that link to each other, does that cause a problem for importing?

[NTC]

you need to manage the import...

is each sheet additional records into the same table? are the column headings all identical?

import them sheet by sheet....possibly even copy the excel doc and delete some sheets...

it is a one time task and so you do whatever you need to do to get the data into the tables as you want them....

[jacko311]

No each sheet is different, for example one sheet is used to set variables used in the main data input sheet. The data input sheet has many other columns that are not data input columns/cells but actually look at the data that has been entered and makes some calculations. Five other sheets are used as daily sheets to determine activity per half hour time frame for 500 rows. And the last sheet collects and summarizes the data from the data input and weekly sheets.

I realize now that this should have been built with Access but with so much time spent i would rather convert the existing spreadsheet if possible and if it is less time consuming than building a database from the ground up.