ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Data page > Transferring data to specific programs > Transferring data to Microsoft Access

Transferring data to Microsoft Access

Introduction

Microsoft Access is a database program that's part of the popular Microsoft Office suite. The easiest way to transfer data to earlier versions of Access (up to and including Access 2010) is simply to save it as a dBase file; however versions of Access from 2013 onwards no longer support this file type, so for newer versions of Access, you'll need to transfer by saving to a comma-separated (CSV) or tab-separated (text) file.

Copy and paste

It's not possible to copy and paste data from ANY-maze to Microsoft Access.

Saving data to a file

Microsoft Access supports all the file formats in which ANY-maze can save data, except SYLK. The easiest format to use for versions of Access up to Access 2010 is dBase - although, because field names in dBase are limited to 10 characters, this format will use ANY-maze's short variable names for field names. If you'd prefer to use the standard column titles that appear on the Data page spreadsheet as the field names in the Access database, or you have a version of Access from 2013 onwards, then you should save the data as a CSV file.

How to open a dBase file in Access

Note that this will only work in versions of Microsoft Access up to and including Access 2010. Versions of Access from 2013 onwards do not support dBase files.
 1.Open the Access database you want to import the data into - or create a new database. 
 2.Click the File menu. 
 3.Select Get external data | Import.... The Import window will appear.  
 4.At the bottom of the window is a list titled Files of Type. Select 'dBase IV'. 
 5.In the main part of the window, navigate to the file you saved from within ANY-maze and select it. 
 6.Click the Import button.  

How to open a CSV file in Access

 1.Open the Access database you want to import the data into - or create a new database. 
 2.Click the File menu (or the File tab, in versions of Access from 2013 onwards). 
 3.In versions of Access up to Access 2010, select Get external data | Import.... The Import window will appear.  

For Access 2013 onwards, select Open, then select the Computer option and click Browse.... The Open window will appear.

 4.At the bottom right of this window is a list of the types of file you can open. Select 'Text files' from this list. 
 5.In the main part of the window, navigate to the file you saved from within ANY-maze and select it. 
 6.Click the Import button (or the Open button in Access 2013 onwards) - the Import text wizard will open (from Access 2013, this is called the Link text wizard). 
 7.On the first page of the wizard, make sure that the Delimited option is selected, and click the Next button. 
 8.On the next page check the box titled First row contains field names, then click Next. 
 9.Proceed through the rest of the wizard selecting the options you want to use - these will depend on what you plan to do with the resulting Access database.  

See also:

 •Selecting cells, columns or rows 
 •Copying and saving data 
 •The save data window 

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ANY-maze help topic T0889