Importing data into multiple tables

[brandie]

Hello you helpful people!

Is there an easy-ish way to be able to import data from one Excel file into multiple related tables without performing an import for each table? When you perform an import, it only lets you select one table at a time, but I'd like to be able to do more.

A little background, if it helps:

I have set up a real estate database that contains some "general" information that applies to all properties (like address or state), plus various related tables linked with a serial number that allow me to add portals. For example, one thing we track is sales of a property. If the property sells 4 or 5 times, this set up allows us to just have a portal to show all related sales.

Originally, I set up the General table to also include the fields "OriginalOwner" "OriginalArea" and so on. But a co-worker suggested that this information should be kept in the same table related items (ie, original owner should just be the first related record the "Owner" field in the table for Ownership History). Hopefully that's making sense.

The problem arises when I want to import data. Most of the data goes to the General Table, but things like Original Owner or Original Area need to go into those related tables (as just one record, associated with the same serial ID). Since I can only import into one table, I'm basically forced to do another import for each of the other tables after exporting the correct serial IDs.

I've attached an empty copy of the database, if this will help anyone figure out what the heck I'm talking about. :

Auto_Industry.zip

[sbg2]

Instead of doing a manual import why don't you script all the imports to be executed in one script?

[brandie]

The source file I'll be using is varied, with different columns or different orders in each. Unfortunately, that's how they're provided to me.