You probably already know that you can access your ManuSoft data using standard ODBC drivers. This allows you to display your ManuSoft data in programs that support ODBC, like Crystal Reports and Excel. Another program that supports ODBC is Microsoft Access. Unfortunately, it appears that Microsoft Access' ODBC support is not quite as good as Microsoft Excel's, plus how you set up the links to your ManuSoft data in Access has changed quite a lot with each new release of Access.

Here are the steps for creating a "linked table" to your ManuSoft data in Access 2007:

1. Create a new blank Database.
2. Select the “External Data” ribbon, then in the “Import” section click on “More”, then “ODBC Database”, like so:
   
3. Select “Link to the data source by creating a linked table” and click “OK”.
4. In the “Select Data Source” dialog that opens, select the “Machine Data Source” tab, find and select “ManusoftDBF” in the list, then click “OK”.
5. Select the table(s) you want to link to. Use Ctrl-Click to select/deselect more than one entry, then click on “OK” to continue:
   
6. For each table to selected you’ll now be prompted to “Select Unique Record Identifier”. This is essentially asking you to select which field(s) make up the Primary Key for the table. This information can be found in Section 4 of the reference manual. For example, in the case of the Material database, the Primary Key is made up of the “partcode”, “reserved” and “item” fields, so I select all three of them (no need to hold down the Ctrl key this time) then click OK:
   
7. If the Database Navigator is turned on you should now see some new entries for the tables you have linked, each with a “globe and arrow” icon, like so:
   
8. Double-click on any of the entries to open the table and you should see some data, like so:
   
    

It *should* be as simple as that! What sorts of problems are there or might you face? 

• Amount fields will sometimes be rounded to 2 decimal places, even if you use more than 2 in ManuSoft.
• Other number fields may not support number as big or as small as in ManuSoft. This will display some sort of error message in their fields inside Access.
• $NAME or other funny error messages may be a result of a dodgy DBF file header. Do a Condense of the table in ManuSoft, then delete the linked table and add it again using the steps above.
• Note: If you hover your mouse over a linked table in the Navigator pane a tool tip appears showing the ODBC Link information. Part of this information is the path to the DBF files. Thus, if you copy the Access database onto another computer which does not have the DBF files in the same location, then the links will no longer work.