updating multiple MS ACCESS tables with 1 spreadsheet - excel

Question

I have a MS Access database with about 1000 tables. The Tables are independent of each other, that is they are not linked to each other. Basically each table contains records of stock of a particular good. The Names of each table is the name of the item, for example 125 gm Soap, 200 ml Oil, etc. and contains the following columns : -
Date
Daily Opening Stock
Daily Sales
Daily Purchases
Daily Closing Stock
Each day, sales/purchases of all the goods are recorded in accounting software. The End of Day report summary is generated in Excel Format. This report is a consolidated report of daily Sales/Purchases of all the goods, row-wise. The Columns in Excel are :
Date
Item Name
Daily Opening Stock
Daily Sales
Daily Purchases
Daily Closing Stock
Presently I have to manually open each table in Access & copy-paste the respective daily sales/purchases data from the excel report. I want to automate this process so that the record is automatically appended to each of the respective table, basis the Item Name.
In summary, I want to update multiple tables in Ms Access database file, from data contained in 1 Ms Excel spreadsheet.
Is that possible ? Your help would be highly appreciated.
Thanks,
Thiru V. Klack

Answer 1

My first question to you is why can't the Access database match the data structure of the Excel spreadsheet? Updating 1 Access table from 1 spreadsheet is a lot simpler than what you're trying to do. Having 1,000 tables with the same data structure, where each table is named after a product, seems pretty fishy to me.
That being said, if you need to keep your 1,000 tables (I'm honestly surprised you're not hitting the DB maximum threshold for Access), there are ways you can make it work. I would suggest having a lookup table that matches the product (as it appears on the spreadsheet) to the table in Access it goes to. Then, you'd import the Excel data into a staging table, and run some VBA code to loop through the lookup table, running a query to append all the data from Excel into the appropriate Access table. Something like this:
private const STAGING_TABLE_NAME as string = "tDataFromExcel"
private Const LOOKUP_TABLE_NAME as String = "tGoodsToTableNames"
public sub AddData()
Dim db as DAO.Database
Dim rsItemLookup as DAO.Database
Dim strSQL as string
Dim GoodName as string, TableName as string
set db = CurrentDB
set rsItemLookup = db.OpenRecordset("select good_name, table_name from " & LOOKUP_TABLE_NAME)
do while not rsItemLookup.EOF
GoodName = rsItemLookup.fields("good_name").Value
TableName = rsItemLookup.fields("table_name").value
strSQL = _
"insert into " & TableName & " (" & _
"[date], " & _
"[Daily Opening Stock], " & _
"[Daily Sales], " & _
"[Daily Purchases], " & _
"[Daily Closing Stock]) "
"select " & _
"[date], " & _
"[Daily Opening Stock], " & _
"[Daily Sales], " & _
"[Daily Purchases], " & _
"[Daily Closing Stock]) " & _
"from " & STAGING_TABLE_NAME & " " & _
"where [Item Name] = """ & GoodName & """"
db.Execute strSQL
rsItemLookup.MoveNext
loop
end sub
Again, I'm certainly not advocating you take this approach: If you can, I would strongly implore you to refactor your database to not have 1,000 virtually identical tables.

Answer 2

Zack's answer provides a way to do what you're asking, but recommends that you do something else. I'm going to try to demonstrate that what he recommends would work for your situation, and show you how to achieve it.
You want to transfer data in an excel spreadsheet into a relational database that holds the same data - usually to give better access/manipulation. The data is in a big table of one day, with a separate line for each product, and you want to be able to view the entire history of a single product, so you have separated out the tables.
This is going to significantly slow down the automatic transfer process - that long loop that re-writes and processes the SQL over and over. You can look at the data in that way without this setup though. Lets call this tblProductDetails
One table has your product information - things like the name of the product, how much it costs... The other has the in/out records of what was bought and sold, keeping track of stock on hand at any point. This second table is going to have a LOT of records, as it's a new record for each product that was bought and/or sold each and every day. We might call this tblInOut.
With a Select query you can save in Access, you can look at the history of any one product at any time - you can even set this as a variable so that when you open the only query you save it prompts you for the name of the product you want to look up.
I've mocked up a 4 product sample schema for you with a query to show all the data, and another to show just the one product's history. You can use the second query exactly as is in Access' query builder (SQL view) where '125g Soap' (on the second last line) is mentioned in the query name so you know which query is which.
If you want to use just one query, do the same thing with one exception: on the second last line, where it says '125g Soap' replace the whole thing with Product_Name (without the inverted commas) and when you open the query, Access will give you a message box asking you to type in a product name.
This feature will only work if you type the name exactly right though, so you might prefer just to build a form so you can give the user a combo box with which to select the exact product name.