Mapping Data Drives

Resolved · High Priority · Version 2003

Fri 24 Apr 2009, 16:14 Delegate Alex said...

Alex has attended:
Excel Advanced course
Access Advanced course

Mapping Data Drives

In access you can link tables from different databases. However assume that the folder containing the database is a public folder and different users may have it mapped to different drives on their computer. Therefore if I link a table it's path could be L:publicfolder/database/table1 but if someone else goes into the database and has the public drive mapped to a different drive on their computer, then microsoft access won't find it at the above address because their public drive is on the M: drive for example. Therefore the question is whether there is a way to link tables (and generally map things) without referencing to a specific drive?

Mon 27 Apr 2009, 17:03 Trainer Andrew said...

RE: Mapping Data Drives

Hi Alex,

Thank you for your question. Mapped drive letters are convenient for shortening long directory paths but as you have pointed out the letter used may vary depending on the machine being used to connect to the shared resource.

An alternative to a drive letter is to enter the full network path. These often look like:

\\servername\directory\subdirectory\myfile.xls

Check with whoever looks after your network. They should be able to give you the full path to the folder location. Since this path describes the location in full it is independent of any drive mappings the user may have and should work on any machine for a user that has permission to connect to the public drive.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,
Andrew

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Access tip:

Calculating The Difference Between Dates

If you wish to calculate the time between two date fields, this can be done in a number of ways:

1. As a calculated field in a query
2. As a calculated control in a form or report
3. As a calculation in a VBA procedure.

The basic syntax to get the number of days between two dates is:

=[One Date Field] - [Another Date Field]

You can also use one of the following functions:

=Month([One Date Field] - [Another Date Field])
which calculates the number of months between the two fields

=Year([One Date Field] - [Another Date Field])
which calculates the number of years between the two fields.

Another function is the DateDiff() function.

It uses an argument to determine how the time interval is measured. For example:

=DateDiff("q",[One Date Field] - [Another Date Field])
returns the number of quarters between the two fields.

Other intervals that can be used in this expression are as follows:
"yyyy" - Years
"m" - Months
"d" - Days
"w" - Weekdays
"ww" - Weeks
"h" - Hours
"n" - Minutes
"s" - Seconds