Excel as input form to Access? (1 Viewer)

[Timtropolis]

Greetings all,

I have a client who initially hired me to convert an excel spreadsheet app to an Access app. Well they have now made a request (actually, more like a demand ) to use Excel as the input tool with the data being housed in access tables.

I've never done this and was wondering if its possible to use ODBC to link tables that are in Access to an input sheet in Excel. At this point, I'm not even sure if its feasable. Any input would be most welcome here. Just looking for yes or no to this, and if yes, whether or not this is worth pursuing. All opinions welcome.

I'm using Office 2003 for all apps.

TIA,
Tim

 

[boblarson]

For simplicity I will say, Yes you can link to an Excel sheet and access it in Access just like a table. One potential problem though, that I've run across sometimes, is that if someone opens the Excel workbook then Access complains that it can't access it because it is opened exclusively. You'd have to see if that would be a problem for you.

 

[Timtropolis]

Greetings Bob,

I was in the middle of changing my post and you probably replied while I was doing so.

According to your post, it sounds like you thought that I meant linking to Excel as a table from Access. In actuality, its the reverse. The users would be inputting data into an excel form which they want to be linked to a table in access. Their reasons for this is because they want to keep thier spreadsheet functionality intact, to which I've explained that may not be possible regardless. Anyways, just wanted to re-confirm your answer.

thanks again for taking the time to assist
Tim

 

[boblarson]

No, I didn't misunderstand. You can link to Excel and have it act like a table and your users can open Excel and make data changes and Acess will then see the changes in real-time.