If you organization grows larger or you find yourself needing another database to hold different information, you can use the features of Access to link two databases together. The link operation for databases is very similar to linking different spreadsheets. The beauty of linked objects is that if you make changes in the database, the changes stay in the database and do not affect the linked file.

To perform this link operation, first open the destination database where you want to bring data in. Then, click File à Get External Data à Link Tables. The Link dialogue box will appear:

Browse to the location on your computer that contains the file (in this example, My Sample Database). Click the file to highlight it and click Link.

The Link Tables dialogue box will appear. Here you can switch between the different database objects like Tables and Queries by using the tabs at the top of the window, and select which object you want to copy from one database to your current working database.

Click each object name you want to copy so they are selected (or click the Select All button to highlight all objects under the current tab) and then click OK. The new object will then appear in the appropriate list of database objects in the Database window with a small arrow beside each linked object:

Access has the ability to establish a link with many other file types other than Access and Excel; the procedure is essentially the same for each different type. You will select an object which Access will then analyze. Access will extract data from the file formats it recognizes and use a copy of the data from the object for its own use.

If at any time you do not need the linked object anymore, you can delete the object from the Access database; simply click the linked object and click the Delete button in the database window, so long as the object does not have major dependencies from other objects in your database (more on this later in this manual). The data contained in the linked object will not be touched.