Chapter 17 - Exporting Data from Access

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Throughout this book, you’ve discovered ways to use Microsoft Access 2002 to manage, maintain, organize, and query data as well as generate reports that help you make the most of your data in a powerful and efficient way. One of Access’s strong points is its built-in flexibility; a key aspect of that flexibility is its ability to both accept data from and output data to files that can be used with a variety of programs.

The ability to export data tables from Access to, say, a Microsoft Excel worksheet or a comma-delimited file that can be imported by a mainframe database means that users of widely differing programs can work with your Access data. And by writing Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code using Automation to work with other applications’ object models, you can go beyond the menu selections for exporting data—for example, to create Microsoft Outlook contacts or tasks from Access data or to produce an elegantly formatted Microsoft Word report from an Access query that combines data from several tables.

In the previous chapter, you learned about the features that let you bring data into Access through importing and linking. This chapter focuses on the output: exporting data through a variety of means and to a variety of formats. As is true of so many other tasks in Access, you can work with the Access interface or use VBA code when you export data.

Using the Interface vs. Using Code for Exporting

Access gives you the option of exporting data by choosing File, Export and then selecting an export format from a dialog box or by using VBA code. You can also use the Office Links button on the toolbar to easily export to three of the most popular formats. These exporting methods differ significantly. Even a beginning Access user can export data using the Export dialog box or Office Links, but using code to export data requires some ability to write VBA code and a basic understanding of the target application’s object model.

In the following section, you’ll learn how to export data using the interface. In the section "Exporting Data Using VBA Code," you’ll learn how to use coding techniques to export Access objects to different file formats.