Can't delete data in a linked table

[jmhultin]

I'm a real neophyte with Access. My goal is to get a huge amount of data pared down so that I can work with it in Excel, in which I have much greater knowledge.

I started with a 14 million record text file provided by a government agency. I used a text editor to break that into 7 2-million record files to fit into Access. I figure I can filter each of those files down to 500,000 or so records, so that I can manipulate them in Excel. The problem is, when I open a text file in Access, Access insists on linking it, and then I can't delete data from a linked file.

There is probably something very basic that I am missing. Can somebody please help me?

Thank you.

[June7]

Cannot edit linked text or Excel files from Access. Must edit those files in their native program. Or write long, complex VBA code that opens and manipulates those files as objects.

[jmhultin]

Thanks. I'll look for other solutions.

[NoellaG]

Hi,

instead of opening the file use the External Data -> Import -> text file. This imports your data into Access tables in stead of linking the file.