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Merging Tables

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Joeya1

Technical User
Oct 12, 2009
3
US
Hello,

I am in the prcoess of creating an automated report in MS Access that will keep track of my organization's employee expenses that pertain to external clients.

In order to do this I have begun creating a tables for storing all the data records in a CSV format. The data is retrieved from various systems that do not ncecessarily contain the same field names. Each data provider generates a report in a different layout but has some information that can be mapped or linked to the other reports. The common field that can link the data is the staff name and staff id. By using these two common fields I can create a new data base that will have the neccessary information to create a standard report. I was able to create a data base by merging / mapping the information from the different systems onto an excel worksheet. This was a manual and time consuming project.


The challenge I face is creating an automated report in MS Access. I need help with merging 20 tables into one table, and with mapping information from 4 additional tables into one. The 20 tables have the common fields (and may be merged into 1), but the 4 other tables have additional fields that I need but are not common to the fields in the other tables. The only common fields that all tables have are the employee names and their respective ID numbers.

The problem I face is the data mapping for each provider which are currently hundreds. I would like to know if there is a standard way to do this, or if there is a mapping template in MS Access already designed for this. Or should I create a master template table, which would have all the same column names / fields needed to create the the automated report. I was also wondering if the import functionality in MS access allows easy creation of import templates, and how easy it would be to maintain them.


 
you can create an import specification and save that specification. As you are importing .csv files this should be ok.

to create the import specification go to tables and click new and then choose import. then find your file suppliers file name (you may need to change the file type) and choose advanced. then change field names etc.. and save as your suppliers name or something else to link to that suppliers file type.

do this for each one. then you could simple use a little bit of code to call all your suppliers up and import the files assuming you are able to identify which file belongs to which supplier.

hopefully if i have understood that part this should work.

Regards

It's not what you know. It's who's on Tek-Tip's
 
Is this easier than creating tables, establishing links to each table and then eventually running queries?
 
not necessarily easier. i would say its probably "tidier" to have this. that way you would only really need to maintain the two tables. (the import master table and then the actual data table)

aswell as your supplier list/specification names of course.

It's not what you know. It's who's on Tek-Tip's
 
Okay, I am having problems with my tables and creating queries. I need assistance with creating this and was wondering if you can possible walk me through the process.
 
sure, are you able to post your .mdb somewhere for me to download and look/change?

It's not what you know. It's who's on Tek-Tip's
 
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