Microsoft Access - How to change Data Type for multiple fields or columns

Question

Dear friend,

I'm using Office 2019 ProPlus, there is Access 2016 along with it. When I'm trying to edit the table to change Data Type, I have to manually right click to design view then change the type one by one, is there any shortcut to do that if I wanted to change type for some certain columns?

I selected some but the property field was grayed out. any ideas?

Answer 1

No, you have to edit each individual field.

Answer 2

Hi Hans,

Thanks for replying.

Further question is that, whenever I imported from excel, it comes with default short test type that I can't export as .dbf, so I have to manually change them to long text before exporting. Is there any way to make it default as long text, or how to identify which field or column that needs to be changed to long text before exporting? I can't imagine we have to do it manually if there were over 100+ columns.

Many thanks.

Answer 3

When importing data from an external source, it usually better to link to the data THEN append the data to an existing table that has the data types set properly for your needs.

Answer 4

You might consider creating a new table with the proper data types using SQL: CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements are what to study, and then import the data into the properly typed table.