It can often be the case, that the data you need for your Excel worksheet is stored in a database application. Database applications are great for managing, maintaining, and retrieving huge amounts of data. Database programs also provide features for defining relationships between data entities, for developing queries to extract information, and for securing sensitive information. For these reasons and more, organizations often make extensive use of data bases.

Happily, Excel 2003 provides a mechanism that allows you to import data from a database. Moreover, the imported data can be linked to the database, so that changes to the underlying database tables can be refreshed and updated in your Excel worksheets.

The Microsoft Office 2003 suite provides drivers, (software that helps other programs communicate), that will allow Excel to import data from:

·              Microsoft SQL Server

·              Microsoft Access

·              dBase

·              Microsoft FoxPro

·              Oracle

·              Paradox

·              SQL Server

·              Text files

If you wish, Excel 2003 will also let you create a query when you are importing data from a database. This will permit you to select only certain fields form the database based on criteria that you specify.

The Query feature is optional with Excel, but if you install it, you will be able to query database programs like those mentioned above from within Excel. If the query feature is not currently installed in Excel, you should get a prompt to install it when you choose Data->Import external Data->New Database Query.

For this example, we will import data from a Microsoft Access database without using a query.

To begin, open Excel and choose Data ->Import External Data->Import Data from the menu bar. This will display the Select Data Source dialogue box.

Select the Access database file that you want to import data from. The icon for Access files looks like this, and the extension for Access files is .mdb.

Next, click the Open button to show the Select Table dialogue box.

Databases are often organized into related tables. The tables available in this data base are Clients, Employees, and Inventory. Select the table you want to import, and click OK.

This is the Import data dialogue box. You can use this box to locate the data on the current worksheet or on a new worksheet. Click a cell at the upper left of the range where the data will be located, check to see if the cell reference has been entered correctly, and click OK.

Here is the database table after being imported to Excel.

The External data toolbar is displayed when you import data from another source. If you click the red exclamation mark on the toolbar, any changes made to the source data in the database will be refreshed (updated) in Excel.