# Can I do this with Excel? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 23, 2014, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-do-this-with-excel/693875 "2014-07-23T20:42:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-do-this-with-excel/693875/21 "2014-07-25T02:48:26Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > Are you sure you cannot get Access linked to the database directly - “LIVE” ? > Well the DB people may not want to give you full access to the database, but they can give you a read only “view” … linked to your access … the view would be the “select” of SQL, of only the fields you need, but it can include “join”… so right there the guts of your report is already done. You ask for a report linked to your Access, they do it in like 5 minutes… I would like this but I don’t think they will do it–see comments above someone made about protective DB people. I will maybe ask at some point but after getting (again, as I said, literally and loudly) laughed out of the room last time, it’s going to have to be a well timed and well put query… In the background here, btw, is the fact that I’m not too confident the people I’m talking about actually know how to do any of this stuff themselves. I mean, I know for sure they don’t know SQL (and seem to think it ludicrous that anyone could learn even the basics in a short time frame) and as mentioned above are talking in terms of trying to hire “outside vendors” for this kind of thing. Given my suspicions here, I am not even that 100 percent sure that they’re even aware of a way to interface Access with their database. I am (hopefully) probably wrong about that, but given my worries I have to be careful about doing anything that might expose this ignorance… You don’t want to be on the wrong side of the IT people… ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-do-this-with-excel/693875/22 "2014-07-25T03:27:44Z")
Tangential but since I have you guys here… In Access, if a field has a lookup, how can I “see through” the lookup to the actual value? I can ferret it out using the “relationships view” but surely there’s some way to just make the lookup transparent I hope? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-do-this-with-excel/693875/23 "2014-07-25T04:27:04Z")
NVM figured it out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-do-this-with-excel/693875.md?page=1)