Convert Access 2003 Database to Excel

See Microsoft Access Tutorial for a tutorial on a more recent version of Access.

A very common question many people have when learning Access is "how do I convert an Access database to an Excel spreadsheet?".

What they usually mean is, "how do I export the data from my Access database to an Excel spreadsheet".

Often they want to do this because they need to distribute the data to someone else who may not have Microsoft Access. Also, in most cases, it's better to send someone a simple spreadsheet containing exactly the data they require, than to send them the whole database and then say, "run the Individual query".

In any case, it's very easy to export data from Access to Excel. You can either export the contents of a table, or the result of a query.

Here's how you go about doing this.

  1. Click on the table or query that contains the data you want to export
  2. From the "File" menu, click "Save As/Export"
  3. Select "To an External File or Database"
    MS Access 2003: Convert Access to Excel spreadsheet
  4. Choose a location for your Excel spreadsheet (or double click on an existing one)

You now have an Excel spreadsheet containing the data from your query that you can email to anyone you like.


Update

Since this tutorial was written, there have been many subsequent updates to Access. Here's the latest Access tutorial.