I'm trying to create an access database from excel files to all dump into
one database. I am not a professional on MS Access. However the problems
I'm running into are:
Cannot add all excel files to one database
Cannot make database searchable by one field
Have it "Read Only" by some clients and accessible to others to modify
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Excel is a spreadsheet; Access is a relational database. Just
"dumping" spreadsheets into a database will pretty certainly result in
a very bad, perhaps unusable, design.
I would suggest stepping back and designing a database *based on the
logical structure of the data*. This will not resemble a spreadsheet!
You can then link to the Excel data and run Append queries to migrate
the *information* in the spreadsheets into your normalized table
structure.
You say you "cannot make database searchable by one field". What
exactly do you mean? You can't search "a database" - you can search
for data in any field in a Table, by using a Query; the Query can
contain several linked tables.
For the security issue, you'll need to implement Access security. It's
somewhat complex and you must do it *right*. There's a good Security
Whitepaper on Microsoft's
http://support.microsoft.com downloads site;
search for "Access Security Whitepaper", they keep moving things
around.
If you could describe the nature of the data - probably in a more
appropriate newsgroup such as microsoft.public.access.tablesdbdesign
rather than in this Forms newsgroup - someone should be able to help.
John W. Vinson[MVP]
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