Unable to import from Excel into table with Multiple-field primary key

[pdeleeuw930]

Hi folks,

I am learning Access by doing and may have missed some important theoretical point.

I have a table in my database that contains sets of lumber prices from different time periods. Any given size of lumber comes in several grades and different grades have different prices.

A complete set of prices consists of a price for each Size/Grade combination. My table is to contain a growing number of complete price sets each associated with a date.

So my fields are these: DateTime (a date/time field), SizeName (text 10), GradeGroup (text 10), and Price (Double).

None of the fields alone would serve as a primary key but each combination of DateTime/SizeName/GradeGroup will be unique. Accordingly I assigned those three fields as being the primary key.

When I try to import this historical data from an excel spreadsheet which contains one price set, everything looks like it's going well. It correctly interprets my column headings, etc.. But when I push the "Finish" button it complains that it is rejecting 72 records (that would be every single one of them) because the key is not unique.

I have stripped this table of its relationships to other tables but the symptom remains the same. The table is empty as I do the experiment so there's no chance of a duplicate already in there. If I say "Go ahead anyway", it imports all the price records into their correct fields and every Date/Size/Grade combination is indeed unique.

What am I missing in my inexperience? Grateful for any ideas!

 

[Bryan]

I would add an autonumber field to your table and use that as the PK. Import the data from the spreadsheet and Access will automatically populate the PK.

 

[pdeleeuw930]

This is great. I'll try it. Thanks also for the advice on data type. I have adopted it.