What Is Linking? 

When you link data to an Access table, you connect to data from another application without importing it so that you can view and edit the data in both the original application and your Access database. You can link a table only in an Access database, not an Access project.

Access uses a different icon in the Database window to represent linked tables. Icons for linked tables have an arrow to the left of them. If you delete the icon for a linked table (select the linked table, and then click Delete on the Edit menu), you delete the link to the table, not the external table itself.