Changing Data Types in Linked Tables

[Dowsey1977]

Hi,

I have an Access database with a bunch of linked tables, that are linked to tabs on an Excel spreadsheet. The cells in Excel for 1 column are set to number, however, these are text data types in Access. Is there anyway of changing something somewhere so that the datatypes are numeric in both?

I also want 1 field to be memo in Access, is there a change I can make to Excel to make this happen?

Many thanks!

 

[mdmilner]

I think, you can't control datatypes for linked tables.
My understanding is that Access guesses as to the field type based on the first few sample rows (records) of data in the given column (fields).

One way to get the right type is to put dummy data into that first row forcing it to see it. This trick tends to get used when the first few rows may not have data in every field. Kinda messy though if you're working with linked fields although it's not terribly difficult to programmatically ignore the dummy data record.

Mike