In this lesson, we will be importing an Excel file into MS Access and learning to use the sort and filter functionality. If you want to follow along, download the Excel file below:
I am using the same database I build in the previous lesson. You can start a new one if you want, but since most of these early lessons will be sandboxing( a programming term for playing around with a software platform) in Access it doesn’t really matter if you just use the same database for everything.
From the Home screen in Access, click on the External Data tab and open up the External Data ribbon
Select New Data Source > From File > Excel
Browse for your excel file, select Import the source data into a new table and click ok (note, if you want to use a different Excel file, you can)
My excel file has column names in the first row, so I make sure that is check and I click next
Up top, you can change column names, and data types, but in this case, Access did a good job of assigning datatypes for me. Next>
I check Let Access add primary key, you could just select your own from the drop down though. Next >
Name your table whatever you want and hit Finish
If you spent a lot of time fixing data types and column names or if you are going to upload a file like this on a regular basis, you can save import steps, but I am going to skip this for now, just hit close
Click on your new table to open it up
Sorting
Filters and sorting work like they do in Excel, here I select my column and Sort Largest to Smallest
Filter
Here is select Model and filter down to a single model (Accuvix A30)
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