Copying data from Access into Excel too slow? Do this first.

I’ll occasionally use MS Access to query a SQL Server database (via ODBC connection).

After running the SELECT query, I’ll copy/paste the data into MS Excel for the analysis. I prefer this over the option in the “External Data” ribbon to export data.

Often the copy/paste from MS Access is quite time consuming.

I’m impatient

Speed up the process with this trick

1. Change your query from “Select” to “Make Table”. Specify the table name, then run the query to actually make the table.

Often I’ll call the new table “temp”

2. Query this new table

Tip: use the “*” to get everything

3. While viewing the new results, go ahead and copy as you would (select all data by clicking the top-left box), then Ctrl + C.

Click the top-left corner to select all data

4. Paste the data in Excel

MS Access somehow uses less memory and the “copy” is much faster when viewing a table rather than querying it.

Given the size of my dataset and the speed of my computer, this often saves me several seconds (or sometimes minutes) with every query export.