Sharing information between Access and Excel

I have a real Dilbert kind of assignment that I am hoping that someone can
give me a hand with. Currently my company uses a spreadsheet to calculate
the commision for the sales folks. They want to have a way of saving the
information for historical reasons and want a database. (Personally I don't
see why they just don't save off versions of the database but I don't get to
make that kind of suggestions.)

The spreadsheet is not that complex so there really isn't much that the
database would have to store. It does, however, have a number of
calculations that are based off of the few imputs.

My problem is this. How do I, using either Access or Excel XP, create a
means of displaying the information in a format familer to the users. When I
try to use a Excel drop-in in a Access report and try to import the
information in I get an error that the database is already in use. When I
try to go through Excel, I can't seem to find a dynamic way to send a query
to Access to pull the information that I need.

I might be missing something simple but I am beating my head against the
wall at this point so I could use a fresh perspective.

Thanks

Since we don't know anything about "calculations that are based off of the
few inputs" I would suggest you put everything in Access and get rid of
Excel entirely. If you need to pull some data from Access into Excel, you
can easily use MS Query to get external data and link to Access.

--
Duane Hookom
MS Access MVP


"C.M. Warden" (donotspam) wrote in message
...
I have a real Dilbert kind of assignment that I am hoping that someone can
give me a hand with. Currently my company uses a spreadsheet to calculate
the commision for the sales folks. They want to have a way of saving the
information for historical reasons and want a database. (Personally I
don't
see why they just don't save off versions of the database but I don't get
to
make that kind of suggestions.)

The spreadsheet is not that complex so there really isn't much that the
database would have to store. It does, however, have a number of
calculations that are based off of the few imputs.

My problem is this. How do I, using either Access or Excel XP, create a
means of displaying the information in a format familer to the users.
When I
try to use a Excel drop-in in a Access report and try to import the
information in I get an error that the database is already in use. When I
try to go through Excel, I can't seem to find a dynamic way to send a
query
to Access to pull the information that I need.

I might be missing something simple but I am beating my head against the
wall at this point so I could use a fresh perspective.

Thanks