Power Query: Double Access Savings – Part 1
27 July 2022
Welcome to our Power Query blog. This week, I look at how to access two Access databases.
I have two Access databases. These are deliberately very simple, since I am demonstrating a concept here. The first database (imaginatively called ‘Commodity Groups’) contains the Commodity_Groups table:
![](http://sumproduct-4634.kxcdn.com/img/containers/main/./image1-1657272348.png/22571b37a97e53e9bf8876132e5a6457.jpg)
In another database, in the same directory, I have the Commodity_Sub_Groups table. Funnily enough, the name of this database is ‘Commodity Sub-groups’:
![](http://sumproduct-4634.kxcdn.com/img/containers/main/./image2-1657272373.png/213cb48ca715986a9af43898de7b3c3e.jpg)
Now I could link to each database from the ‘Get Data’ option in the ‘Get & Transform’ of the Data tab in Excel:
![](http://sumproduct-4634.kxcdn.com/img/containers/main/./image3-1657273549.png/1bbda4e6464c95cfc9140f159a42981e.jpg)
However, I am going to get the data from both databases in one query. I am going to use the option ‘From Folder’ which can be accessed under the ‘From File’ section:
![](http://sumproduct-4634.kxcdn.com/img/containers/main/./image4-1657273574.png/c53b79dac870d265d4fd2d39b218ad79.jpg)
I navigate to the correct folder and select it:
![](http://sumproduct-4634.kxcdn.com/img/containers/main/./image5-1657273613.png/8781ff05fdc42f6efdeb076d94dbef64.jpg)
I choose to ‘Transform Data’, which will allow me to define how I link the tables later. In this example I will not be appending the data, so to Combine at this point would not be successful.
![](http://sumproduct-4634.kxcdn.com/img/containers/main/./image6-1657273721.png/4d176bc8c09f063ac42a6d732e97a927.jpg)
I can see all the Access database files in the folder. Next time I will apply filters and expand my data.
Come back next time for more ways to use Power Query!