By the way, the Template I'm referring to is the Contact Management Database
for Access 2003 found at the following URL:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC010178391033.aspx?CategoryID=CT101
426031033&av=ZAC000

Peter,
I just tried this with same result as you had - I couldn't import.
I decided to just import the data to a new table and troubleshoot it from
there.
I imported my test contacts data to a new table in the contacts database.
I created an append query to add all the data from my new table to the
contacts
table.
Access error message - 2 records couldn't be imported due to validation rule
violations.
For a test I changed the append query to only append one field - FirstName -
this was appended OK.
Next I changed the append query to only append the next field - LastName -
this created the error message 2 records couldn't be imported due to
validation rule violations. So I switched the append query to datasheet view
to check and I found that the 2 rows that didn't
append both had a Null value for the LastName field. I added a dummy
LastName to those 2 records and the append operation ran without any errors.
To check - I went back to the table and manully added a new dummy contact
with only a FirstName and left all other fields blank - this record was
added successfully with the LastName field left blank. I don't yet know why
this is happening.

It would appear that there are some similar problems with the contacts data
you are trying to import.
If you want to import your contacts for now, I suggest that you import them
into a new table in your contacts database.
I suggest that you make a copy of the Contacts table - structure only and
use this to append the data from the table with your new imports.
Do all the appending one field at a time for each row that won't append
without errors.
When you are happy with all the data in your copy of the contacts table,
append into the real Contacts table.

Jeanette Cunningham

Peter,
I did some further testing with the import.
I went back to the excel sheet with the contact details to import and
changed the column names to exactly match the names in the Contacts table.
By exactly match I mean the same name exactly - if the name in the contacts
table is all one word without spaces, make the spreadsheet column name the
same word without spaces, capital or lowercase doesn't matter.
I could import successfully this time, even if some fields were empty. Hope
this works for you.

Jeanette Cunningham