One possible way
1) export the excel data to a filename as 'csv'
2) create a table raw_table1
3) use this
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/load-data.html[
^] to upload the csv data file to the raw_table1 table
4) create the 'proper' table1 table (or truncate/clear it if it already exists)
5 create a table for the table2 data and insert that reference data into it
now we get to the good stuff
6) write an insert query along the lines of
insert into table1 (id, name, salary, place) select a.id, a.name, a.salary, b.id from raw_table1 a, table2 b where a.place = b.place
check how many rows you get inserted vs the number in the original table1 dataset - if there's an error, make sure you have all the places defined in table2
(there's an even better way of doing this to make sure rows get loaded even if you cant match 'place')