Use the Linked Table Manager in Access to manage external data sources and to refresh, relink, edit, or delete linked tables due to changes to the data source location and table name or schema.

All linked data types are connected to a data source, but for some data types, it's more important to ensure that the data is up to date as possible. While you can always refresh manually, you can easily set some data types to refresh automatically with Data Types Refresh Settings.

You can import the BDCM file containing an external content type and link to the external data in your Access database on your client computer. The data is read-only, but you can periodically refresh the data.

Identify the tables or views that you want to link to or import, and uniquely-valued fields for linked tables. You can link to or import more than one table or view in a single operation.

In Office 365, you can use this dialog box to refresh, relink, add, edit, search, and delete linked tables, but you cannot export information to Excel. In Access 2016 and later, the dialog box is much simpler, but you can export information to Excel.

Training: To ensure you’re working with data from other sources, like Excel worksheets and SharePoint lists, link to the data from your Access database. See how in this video.

You migrated several of your databases to your team SharePoint site, and most of the tables in these databases are linked tables. From now on, instead of creating local tables, you will create SharePoint lists, and then link to these lists from your databases.

The refresh process updates the existing data in a datasheet or form, and doesn't reorder records, display new records, or remove any deleted records or records that no longer meet specified criteria.

When you create a table in Excel and then generate a linked table in the Power Pivot workbook, the tables are linked by name, and have identical data in them. However, the following changes to the Excel table can cause errors:

Use the Linked Table Manager in Access to manage external data sources and to refresh, relink, edit, or delete linked tables due to changes to the data source location and table name or schema.