Saving Access file (2000)

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Why will Access not allow me to save a file to the drive of my choice? After creating a table and adding data, I click on “save” and get a box that gives the option of providing a name for the file and saving it as a type of file. But I cannot find any way to save it in another drive!

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In the first place, all tables, queries, forms, reports etc. you create are stored within the Access database (the .mdb file), not in separate files.

You can export a table to an external file (File | Export…), but the exported file will be completely separate and independent from the Access database.

In the second place, when you enter data in a table, query or form, you don’t need to save the data explicitly, Access will do that automatically when you move to another record or when you close the table/query/form.

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“You can export a table to an external file (File | Export…), but the exported file will be completely separate and independent from the Access database.”

You can, however, link Excel files stored outside of the Access file so that they act as tables within the database. For more info, look at this:
Import or link data from a spreadsheet and follow the instructions to link (rather than to import).

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That is correct, but it goes in the other direction: you don’t save an Access table as an external file, but you “import” an external file as a linked table in Access.

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Before you can create a table, you first create the database. When you create the database, Access lets you save it to any destination you like.

After you have created the database, you can’t move it to another location from within Access. You do that with a file management utility such as Windows Explorer.

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Thanks to all. Now I have an Access headache! I don’t understand why Microsoft could not make it easy to save the database in other drives.

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It’s easy to move or copy an Access database (.mdb file) to another folder or drive in Windows Explorer.

It’s also easy to export a database object (table, query, report) from the database file to another file; this can be done from within the database.

An Access database is quite different from a Word document or an Excel workbook; it doesn’t make much sense to do a Save As of the whole database from within Access.

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