I have a table that that stores info for a filename in each record, and another table that stores multiple rows for each file record representing the data.

I wanted to update the file table with the maximum and minimum dates found in each record so I crafted a query to get those maximum and minimum dates for each file record id. No problem.

Then I tried to tie that to an update query to update each row in the file table with that file’s maximum and minimum dates.

At this point I got a message from Access that I must use an updatable query.

Because I joined in a query using aggregation, that makes the whole query non-updateable.

Rather than do a lot of monkeying around with the query, I decided to create a temporary table with the aggregate query. Temporary in the sense that I would delete it later after I was done using it. So I created a table from the query.

Then I was able to join the new temporary table with the filename table and update the records. Go me!

So if you run into the problem of non-updateable queries and you need to update the query, try using temporary tables. It’s fast and quick as a workaround.