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How to Import Data into Microsoft Access

How to Import Data into Microsoft Access . Working with data in Microsoft Access databases can be preferable to working with spreadsheets for a number of reasons. One database file can hold several tables, which makes consolidating and organizing data easier. Databases are also great for calculating summaries and aggregating data more efficiently than a spreadsheet. Access is a relational database, which means that you can bring related data stored in different tables together to summarize and calculate data; a feat that a spreadsheet like Excel cannot perform. Databases are a necessity when working with large datasets, as spreadsheets have a limit of 65,000 records.

Finally, Microsoft Access databases are compatible with ArcGIS, as tables within Access databases can be directly accessed by ArcGIS and added to ArcMap. Tables can then be joined to boundary files based on a common field, and the data within the tables can be mapped. This is highly preferable to working with table in the dbf file format, which has very particular syntax rules that makes them difficult to work with. Access databases can also serve as geodatabases for holding boundary files and data tables (for instructions on importing shapefiles into Access, see the Import Shapefiles to Access tutorial).

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