OLE stands for Object Linking & Embedding. You can consider its function to be something similar to linking a table from another database, only you are given much more flexibility to the kind of object you can put in your database.

For example, the Employees form in the Northwind sample database contains a short biography of each employee, along with a picture. We have obviously seen text and numbers in forms before, but pictures are new to us:

The picture is referred to as embedded in the database. If the source picture is changed, the employee picture in the form will also change. OLE objects usually include spreadsheets or sources of data not controlled directly by Access. Though many programs (including many non-Microsoft packages) support OLE, much of OLE functionality involves the development of Visual Basic for Applications code (or VBA code) which is beyond the scope of this manual.