Update Microsoft Access table from another Access table using SQL

Question

I am trying to update table Original with the values in Final. I'm new to SQL, but I have been at this for two hours trying to change various samples to fit my needs. I am using Access 2007.

UPDATE
  Original o
SET
  o.[Assest Description] = (
    SELECT f.[Assest Description] FROM Original o, Final f
    WHERE o.[Assest No] = f.[Assest No])
WHERE o.[Assest No] = Final.[Asset No]

Sorry for the crappy title. SO was saying couldn't post because title existed :-) — Hamptonite, Oct 04 '12 at 22:58

Barranka · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-04T23:12:14.630

9

I'm not sure your select statement returns only one row. If you want to perform an update on a table using a select statement for assignment, you must be sure that it returns only one row.

Besides that, you may consider the next solution:

update 
   Original as o
   inner join Final as f on o.[Assest No] = f.[Assest No]
set
   o.[Assest Description] = f.[Assest Description]

Notice that this will only work correctly if both [Assest no] is a unique key in both Original and Final tables, and they are properly related.

edited Oct 04 '12 at 23:12

answered Oct 04 '12 at 23:07

Barranka

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Certainly cmsjr's answer is simpler – Barranka Oct 04 '12 at 23:07
I'm not totally sure my answer will work with the Access engine, so your answer may be the better one. – cmsjr Oct 04 '12 at 23:09
This totally worked and saved my hind quarters. I've tried cmsjr answer, and I thought it was that easy, but it isn't. Thank you both. I'm bad with SQL, but the join statements make me zone out. – Hamptonite Oct 05 '12 at 01:40
@user1721535 I'm glad to know that this helped you. Just one more little (and very personal) opinion: MS Access SQL is a very customized SQL dialect (I call it "Bill's SQL")... It's a good place to learn the basics, but it has some tricks that can be confusing – Barranka Oct 06 '12 at 06:07
2

Based on this I made the following query in Access 2013 and it worked great: `UPDATE Components INNER JOIN Analysis ON Components.Component = Analysis.Component SETComponents.BusinessUnit = Analysis.[Test Area], Components.Impact = Analysis.Impact, Components.InScope = SWITCH (Analysis.[Test Area] = "NA", False, True, True), Components.InUse = SWITCH (Analysis.[Test Area] = "Not Used", False, True, True)` – Shanerk Oct 16 '14 at 21:50

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 04 '12 at 23:02

2

Try this

UPDATE o 
SET o.[Assest Description] =  f.[Assest Description]
FROM Original o, Final f WHERE o.[Assest No] = f.[Assest No]

answered Oct 04 '12 at 23:02

cmsjr

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3

Just as a note -> this query syntax doesn't work for MS Access 2007 – John M May 22 '15 at 19:34
1

It should throw error #3075, *"Syntax error (missing operator) in query expression ..."*. A valid Access SQL `UPDATE` does not include the `FROM` keyword, and you must fully define the data source(s) before `SET`. – HansUp Jun 04 '15 at 19:00
3

This doesn't work for Access 2013 either, same error as pointed out by @HansUp – ThisClark Aug 22 '15 at 19:26

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 09 '23 at 02:23

Access is horribly picky. If you fully qualify the name of the field you are updating it may fails. If you don't fully qualify joins tables and fields, it may come back with "join not supported". I say may because it's likely slightly different versions will do something different. At least that's my experience.

So my answer is start with Create → Query Design. Pick the two tables and get the select working correctly. Then modify it to an update query and make the update to of the column(s) you want to update the fields from the table you want to update from. Then switch to SQL view and use that as the model to build your query in VBA.

I had a syntactically correct SQL statement, but until I did this and then matched the qualifying vs. non-qualified field names exactly, it claimed join is not supported.

Update Microsoft Access table from another Access table using SQL

3 Answers3

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