i want to know the syntax of select statement so that i can retrieve or read data from excel file or word file,without using any programming i.e.,purely a select query.please reply to this mail as soon as possible.

If you link to your Excel spreadsheet from Access, you can make it part of a query without writing any code, but I'm fairly certain you cannot do that with a Word file. What type of data do you want to get from the Word file?

i've read ur reply but i want to know that by a simple select query is it possible to read the data of an excel file without using any other specific keyword and the query written is same as that of what we are writing in read the data from the access database

dabohra, to be truthful, I don't know what the precise requirements are for the Excel file. However, I can tell you that, obviously, it must be organized with the fields going across in columns and the rows being the records. I always place my data range in the first sheet and make sure the rows in the data range are contiguous and do not skip.