Karen,
You can export data to Excel from Access without a problem. The method that
will give you the most control is to control Excel from Access through
Automation. Using Visual Basic you can open the Excel spreadsheet and then go
the specific worksheets and copy or update the data based on queries you run
as you go.
This will require some coding and will require that the Excel spreadsheet's
format stays the same or your code could potentially overwrite the wrong
data. You can include some checks in your code to avoid this, but it depends
on how complex you want your export function to be. In any case, since you
are exporting from Access, your Excel file will be 'static', in the sense
that it cannot be updated but from the Access database.
From your message, though, I gathered that you'd like to be able to do some
type of selection on the second chart so you can show detailed data or a
subset of the first chart. There are many ways to do this, depending on 1)
how much data you are exporting to Excel, 2) how often it needs to be updated
and 3) the response time you need. Your network connections may also play a
role if you have shared drives or users located in other places.
If you'd like to be able to see the latest data entered in the database,
you'll need to link to it from Excel, as external data source. If, on the
other hand, you can live with semi-static data (say, a report that is updated
only once a week), you can probably export from Access once a week and share
that report.
It would really help if you can provide more details about your Excel file
and the data you are exporting. For example, if you think your data will
never have more than 65k records/rows, you can export the raw data to Excel
and do all the manipulation and summarization in Excel though Pivot Tables,
etc. If you have lots of rows, then you may want to keep the two part
separated so the summary data doesn't use many resources in Excel to display
the totals. Again, there are many variables and it will help if you can
provide as many details as possible.
Good Luck,
Fermon