Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
We can twist and coerce Excel into doing more database management than it is
intended to do. However, this creates bloated Excel workbooks with code that
runs at a snail's pace.
•
We can migrate the data from Excel into Access, where it really belongs.
•
We can connect directly to an Excel spreadsheet using
Open Database
Connectivity
(ODBC) for programming in ADO (or DAO).
•
We will discuss the latter approach in this chapter. This does seem to work, but for major
data manipulation, I definitely prefer the second alternative.
17.2 Installing ADO
I should mention a word about installing ADO. ADO is installed along with Office 2000,
but not with Office 97.
To see if you have ADO installed on your system, first open an Access code module, and
then open the
References
dialog box, under the
Tools
menu. If you see an entry such as
the one highlighted in Figure 17-1, you're all set.
Figure 17-1. Reference to the ADO object library
If, on the other hand, you have no such listing, you might want to do a file search of your
hard disk, looking for
MSADOxx.DLL
. If you don't have the file, then you can download
the required software components from Microsoft's web site. At the time of this writing,
the URL is http://www.microsoft.com/data/. (If this URL is no longer valid, try searching
