Exporting MS-Access form results to Excel?

Question

I'm kind of new to Access. I've got some experience working with integrating MySQL and Oracle with PHP to create web-based database search engines, but I am having difficulty understanding certain concepts with Access.

I've got a small database with around 200 entries with 20 fields each. I've written a form to search it by using VBA to run an SQL query against the database and displays the results in datasheet mode to a different form (is this the standard way of doing this, or is there a better way?)

I want to be able to add a button to export those results to excel (or csv or tab or whatever, it doesn't really matter). However, I'm not sure how to do this with the form results. Its easy with an entire database, but I can't find documentation on how to do this. Is there a way to do this? Or am I doing this wrong?

If at all required, I can provide more details.

Answer 1

You said "I've written a form to search it by using VBA to run an SQL query against the database and displays the results in datasheet mode to a different form".

If you mean an actual form in datasheet view, you can export that form's data to Excel with the DoCmd.OutputTo method.

DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputForm, "frmResults", acFormatXLS, _
    "C:\SomeFolder\ExportedResults.xls"

However, if you're opening a query in datasheet view, rather than an actual form, you can export the query's result set.

DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputQuery, "qryResults", acFormatXLS, _
    "C:\SomeFolder\ExportedResults.xls"

You can choose a different OutputFormat instead of Excel if you wish. Look at Access' Help topic for the OutputTo method to see the available choices.