How to Import Data into Microsoft Access

Short Description
How to Import Data into Microsoft Access. This tutorial demonstrates how to import an Excel file into an Access database. You can also follow …

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Content
How to Import Data into Microsoft Access
This tutorial demonstrates how to import an Excel file into an Access database. You can also follow
these same steps to import other data tables into Access, such as dbf files or txt files, with some minor
variation. This document uses some standard database terminology, referring to columns as fields and rows
as records.
Working with data in Microsoft Access databases can be preferable to working with spreadsheets for
a number of reasons. One database file can hold several tables, which makes consolidating and organizing
data easier. Databases are also great for calculating summaries and aggregating data more efficiently than
a spreadsheet. Access is a relational database, which means that you can bring related data stored in
different tables together to summarize and calculate data; a feat that a spreadsheet like Excel cannot
perform. Databases are a necessity when working with large datasets, as spreadsheets have a limit of
65,000 records. Finally, Microsoft Access databases are compatible with ArcGIS, as tables within Access
databases can be directly accessed by ArcGIS and added to ArcMap. Tables can then be joined to
boundary files based on a common field, and the data within the tables…