Excel help, please.

[a_unique_person]

Couple things I can't figure out:

1. How to import data
2. How to store images in a table. I did some research and the best answer I could find was, "Don't, use hyperlinks instead." ... which is fine, except I couldn't quite tell how to do that, and especially how to make the hyperlinked image appear embedded into a form.

There is a binary type that is fine for storing images, varbinary, but I think they are implying you aren't going to have a lot of space. That is, there is a 4GB limit on it, so while you can store images, you can't use it as a place to store a lot of images. One varbinary entry can store 2GB, so you will fill up the 4GB limit pretty quickly. It is also not stored in the table itself, which means access is going to be slower, but I think you would expect that with such data.

Importing data is looked at here. http://blogs.msdn.com/euanga/archive/2006/07/20/672272.aspx

openrowset looks like it can import an excel spreadsheet or access db into a table quite quickly and easily


http://doc.ddart.net/mssql/sql70/oa-oz_5.htm

C. Use the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Jet

This example accesses the orders table in the Microsoft Access Northwind database through the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Jet.
Note This example assumes that Access is installed.
USE pubs
GO
SELECT a.*
FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0',
'c:\MSOffice\Access\Samples\northwind.mdb';'admin';'mypwd', Orders)
AS a
GO