Often in an Access database, lists are presented either as Queries (data views) or Reports. These may suffice for many purposes, but it is also straightforward to then export them to Word or Excel. As with other things Microsoft, in fact, there is more than one route to doing this. All start by previewing the list on the screen.

Method 1: From the menu, click Tools -> Office Links -> Analyze it with Microsoft Excel or Publish it with Microsoft Word. Both will extract the data, with minimal formatting, and open a new copy in Excel or Word. (As usual, if you don't see "office links" under tools, then click the double down arrow to expand the tools list. If you don't see tools at all, try one of the other methods.

Method 2: Right-click on the previewed document, and select Export, which will present a more extended dialog to save a copy of the document as Excel, text, word or other options on your local hard drive or a network location. Instead of right-clicking, you can use the File menu, then Export.

Method 3: Right click on the previewed document, and select "send to," then Mail Recipient, to generate an extract similar to the export options above and email it to someone. Very handy. Instead of right-clicking, you can use the File menu, then send to.

Note, in all three cases, you are creating a copy of the data in a new format. Any editing you do in Word or Excel will be off-line and not ripple back to the database. Often, this is what you want, and so fine. But if you are creating the extract as a convenience for data clean-up, for example, you have to have a method to get the data back into the database. At a minimum, make sure you include the record ID (random or sequential number, usually) in the extract.