exporting

I just talked with a client and he wants me to work a database in this a$$-backwards way. He wants a way he can 'download' the database to his computer and open it in (uck) Excel, thereby 'easily' modifying the database. Then he wants to be able to upload the Excel spreadsheet (or a tab-delimited text sheet) and have it replace or append the current database (depending on what he wants to do). I have thought of a few ways to do this (I'm very concerned about data integrity using this method - ie things being placed into the wrong columns because there's an extra tab or something in there) where I would have a mirrored table created before the database is uploaded and each value would be compared against the old and the changes would be displayed to this client so he knows what's going on. I know I can do this and I know how to do it this way, but I wanted to know if there was some other method by which this could be done that is more straight-forward. Is there a direct way to translate an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) into SQL and then send it to the database? Also, Excel supports dBase to a degree, and if there is some way to translate directly a dBase to MySQL this might work as well. I want to do it web-based, which is how I've always done it, but this customer is very adamant about this method. He feels it's easiest for him. Any help is appreciated. -Ron _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com