How to link read only table from external MS Access

There are times when you need to link table from external MS Access, and MS Access does support that functionality. It can also support many type of external linking apart from MS Access file such as Excel, SharePoint, ODBC or even dBase.

However, I once found that I needed to link external table from MS Access file but I didn't want my user to be able to edit or delete the data on that table. It seemed to me that MS Access does not support the read only external table from another MS Access file. It took me awhile to find out the solution.

The solution for linking external table from an external MS Access file.

In MS Access, you cannot really link read only table from an external MS Access file. But, there is a workaround solution for this. What you need to do is really simple:

1. Create query in that MS Access you want to link to and name it whatever you want.
2. From your main DB, create query with the SQL similar to what show below. Note that the keyword is IN and the path to your external MS Access file:

select * from [query_name] IN '[path to external ms Access\ms_access.accdb]'

For example

select * from query1 IN c:\EXT_DB.accdb

If you need something more flexible, just add path and your external file into your config somewhere. That should work the way your want, the external read only link.