Public Health Emergency Preparedness

2.3.2. Downloading and Importing Data into MS Access

As described in the previous section, the large volume of data will not import into one Access file from one .csv data file. For that reason, as with MS Excel, the data is divided into two .csv files. To use MS Access for data analysis, simply select "Download Data Part 1," and save the .csv file to your hard drive. This file will contain data for the unique ID number, all the demographic questions, and questionnaire questions 1 through 20. Next, select "Download Data Part 2," and save this .csv file to your hard drive. This file will contain data including the unique ID number and questions 21 through 43.

These .csv data files can be easily be imported into MS Access for analysis by using the MS Access Wizard function. The following sections provide instructions for importing the .csv data from these .csv data files.

Getting Ready. The .csv data files downloaded above and saved to your hard disk must be altered slightly before importing into MS Access for analysis. Before importing these data files, open each file in Notepad and remove all quotes surrounding the data. This can be done by selecting "Edit" and "Replace" from the menu. Search for a quote in the "Find What" text box, and "Replace With" nothing, as seen below. Select the "Replace All" button. Then, resave the files without the quotes and close the file.

Next, open the MS Access program. Select "File" and then "New." The program will then prompt you to specify the type of new database you would like to create. Choose "Blank Database," and name and save this new database as desired using the standard Windows dialog prompt.

Starting the Wizard. In order to start the importing wizard, select "File," then "Get External Data," and finally "Import" from the menu. The standard Windows open dialog window will prompt you for the file to import. 

You should first narrow down your file selection view by choosing "Text Files" from the "Files of Type:" field at the bottom of the screen. This will narrow down your search to show you the appropriate data files in each directory. When you find the first data file to import, select it and click the "Import" button.  

When you click the "Import" button, you will begin the Wizard.

Import Text Wizard—Step 1. Once the Import Text Wizard has started, you will see the following window. Make sure the "Delimited" box is selected and click the "Next" button.

Import Text Wizard—Step 2. Then, you will be prompted to define the file format in the following window. Make sure that "Comma" is selected as the delimiter that separates your fields, the "First Row Contains Field Names" is selected (or contains a check mark), and the "Text Qualifier" is set to {none}. 

At this point, you should take a preliminary look at the data fields shown. If the data contains faulty characters, is not lining up appropriately, or is otherwise showing poorly, your data file may have been corrupted. If you suspect that your data file may be corrupted, resave the .csv file from the application to your hard drive by repeating the data download steps above. If the data looks appropriate, then click the "Next" button.

Import Text Wizard—Step 3. The Wizard will now prompt you to specify a table into which the text file data should be imported within this database. Select "In a New Table" which will allow MS Access to create a new table within the database with the imported data. Select the "Next" button.

Import Text Wizard—Step 4. Next, the data must be formatted for file importing. Note in the window below that the data columns are selectable. Select the "BeginTime" column, and set the "DataType:" to "Text." Do the same for the "EndTime" column. These columns default to the date/time data format, but MS Access will not import these dates appropriately. By selecting text, the fields will be imported without errors. Select the "Next" button.

Import Text Wizard—Step 5. MS Access can add a primary key to your data upon insert. This is not necessary at this point and can also be added in later, after the data has been imported. At this time, select "No primary key." Select the "Next" button.

Import Text Wizard—Step 6. At this time, MS Access will prompt you for a table name. Type in the desired table name, and click the "Finish" button. You should receive a prompt stating that the Wizard has finished importing the file to the indicated table. If you receive an error at this point, MS Access will create an error table and list the importing errors in that location. 

Importing the Second Data File. Repeat all of the above steps to import the second data file into MS Access using the Import Text Wizard. The second data file does not contain a BeginTime or EndTime data field, so you do not need to alter any column types within step 4.

Viewing your Table. You will see the newly created table within the "Table" tab of the Access database display window below. To view the data, double select the desired table.

Once you have double clicked on the Access table, you will see the following view of the table and its data. Simply use the scroll bars to view the data in its entirety. 

There are several ways to alter the table's view to better view the data. MS Access will open the table with the default column width shown above. In order to alter the column width, simply place the mouse in the title row, highlighted in gray, over the column line to be moved. When the mouse changes to a cross hair, you can then hold the left mouse button down and adjust the column width.

Since there are too many columns to show in one view, you can highlight columns to "freeze" or continue to show as the scroll bar is used to move through the data. To do this, simply highlight the column to freeze by clicking on its name in the title bar, as shown below. Then, right click to show the menu options, and select "Freeze Columns." You will notice that a dark black line will be drawn to the right of this column to show that it is frozen. To unfreeze the column, simply right select the title bar again and select "Unfreeze All Columns," also shown below.

If you freeze the SurveyID column, as shown above, then you can see how the SurveyID will remain visible as you scroll through the data, as seen below.

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