Article ID: 190195 - Last Review: March 2, 2005 - Revision: 2.3

How To Extract Information from Excel Sheet with DAO

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This article was previously published under Q190195

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SUMMARY

The Excel ISAM driver does not dynamically convert datatypes.
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MORE INFORMATION

If there is a column in your Excel spreadsheet that contains both text and numbers, the ISAM will not be able to correctly interpret which datatype it should be. Make sure that all the cells in a column are formatted to be the same datatype. For example, you might have following data in four columns in an Excel sheet: 
   male   female children teens
   11     cc     78       ee
   22     xx     33       ff
   45     uu     56       oo

If you try to read the data through ISAM driver against the whole sheet, you will get the null values for first row. If you want to avoid this, create named ranges: one containing only the header information and another containing the data information. For example: 
   named range 'myRange1' :
   male     female    children     teens

   named range 'myRange2' :
   11   cc   78   ee
   22   xx   33   ff
   45   uu   56   oo

Now you can connect to Excel and request information only from the particular named range. However, in one range, a particular column can contain only one type of data.
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How to Create a Range

Follow these steps in order to create a range:
  1. Highlight the data.
  2. From the menu bar, click Insert, and then click Name.
  3. Click Define, and then click Range name.
Note: The Refers to box will refer to your highlighted range. This should grow and shrink as data is inserted and deleted.

To retrieve your data, use the range name you just created for the table name in your select statement.
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Excel Steps

  1. Create the Excel file, test.XLS, with following data in sheet1:
       excel File : test.xls with the following entries:

        male  female    children   teens
         11    cc       78           ee
         22    xx       33           ff
         45    uu       56           oo
  2. Create the named range, myRange1 and myRange2, in the sheet containing the appropriate data.
          named range : myRange1

      male female children teens

      named range  : myRange2

      11     cc   78   ee
      22     xx   33   ff
      45     uu   56   oo
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Visual Basic Steps

  1. Create a new standard EXE project called "DAO_EXCEL."
  2. From the Project menu, click References, and then select the Microsoft DAO 3.5 Library check box.
  3. Place a CommandButton on the form.
  4. Paste the following code in the form code window:
          private Sub Command_click1

      im dbtmp As DAO.Database
      im tblObj As DAO.TableDef
      im rs As DAO.Recordset

      et dbtmp = OpenDatabase_
           ("<complete path>\test.xls", False, True, "Excel 8.0;")

      DoEvents

      Set rs = dbtmp.OpenRecordset("select * from `myRange2`")
      While Not rs.EOF
          For x = 0 To rs.Fields.Count - 1
              Debug.Print rs.Fields(x).Value
          Next
          rs.MoveNext
      Wend
      End Sub

      Note the reverse apostrophe "`" while specifying the range
      name(myrange2).
The following results are as expected: 
  11
  cc
  78
  ee
  22
  xx
  33
  ff
  45
  uu
  56
  oo
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REFERENCES

Please refer to the documentation for how to connect to Excel through DAO. Another good reference will be the upcoming ADO->Excel reference.
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APPLIES TO
  • Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Learning Edition
  • Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition for Windows 6.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition
  • Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition
  • The DAO SDK
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Keywords: 
kbdatabase kbhowto kbiisam KB190195
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