Importing from Excel

[tstoneh]

I am trying to import an Excel Spreadsheet into Access and I need to have some fields be text and then some be numeric. For some reason when I go through the process it will not allow me to change the fields to differentiate between text and numeric. I see the box there to do it but it is all greyed out and inaccessable. How do I get to the point where I can specify the fields. What am I missing?

 

[Joe4]

If you are trying to import the data directly from Excel to Access, you unfortunately do not have any control on the format of the data coming into Access. Access tries to "figure" it out for itself by looking at the data in those columns and how it is formatted in Excel.

So the first thing to try is properly formatting the data properly in Excel. However, if you have any blanks in a numeric column, I believe Access will turn the field into a Text Field.

A workaround is to export the data from Excel to a text file, then import the text file into Access. It is an extra step, but you at least have control over the format of fields that are imported through a text file.